{"id":654610,"date":"2026-05-07T22:03:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T22:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/654610\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T22:03:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T22:03:12","slug":"fuel-from-spacex-satellite-launch-caused-light-in-sky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/654610\/","title":{"rendered":"Fuel from SpaceX satellite launch caused light in sky"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\"\"Residents in Fort St. John were left questioning the appearance of a bright light in the sky on May 5th, 2026. (Contributed, Chris Kirady)<\/p>\n

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. \u2014 Residents of Fort St. John may have witnessed an unknown light in the sky on Tuesday night, May 5th.<\/p>\n

Residents in Fort St. John took to social media on the night of May 5th, 2026, to share photos and videos of a blur of light in the sky, with different theories arising about what caused the display.<\/p>\n

Brett Gladman, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of British Columbia (UBC), said the unknown light was caused by fuel from a SpaceX mission.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI and my colleague, Aaron Boley, identify this as being caused by a maneuver of the SpaceX Rideshare mission 2026-100,\u201d he said in a statement to Energeticcity.ca.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On May 5th, 2026, SpaceX said it launched 24 Starlink satellites <\/a>from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to Gladman, fine droplets of released fuel reflect large amounts of sunlight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Residents in other areas of B.C., including Charlie Lake and Tumbler Ridge, also reported seeing the light on Tuesday night.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gladman said he received a video of the light from Vanderhoof, B.C.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More communications satellites being placed in orbit results in a \u2018huge\u2019 increase in satellites in low Earth orbit becoming visible in twilight, according to Gladman.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gladman also said this launch would add more satellites and that it would continue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

SpaceX is expected to launch 24 more Starlink satellites on May 10th, 2026,<\/a> from California<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Residents in Fort St. John were left questioning the appearance of a bright light in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[49,48,66,306],"class_list":["post-654610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}