Bluffton residents spot glowing, fish-shaped light in the sky. What was it?
Beaufort County residents were surprised to see a giant, glowing orb hovering in this sky this morning.
A fish-shaped orb appeared to be moving through the sky above Bluffton and Hilton Head about an hour before sunrise.
Some assumed it was a plane taking off from the Hilton Head Island Airport. Others questioned whether it was extraterrestrial in origin.
In reality, the spectacular glow appears to have been the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket flying overhead, carrying Starlink satellites into Earth’s orbit. Residents spotted the glow between 5:50 a.m. and 6 a.m., which aligns with the timeline of this morning’s SpaceX rocket launch.
What to know about the Falcon 9
The Falcon 9 rocket is the world’s first orbital class rocket capable of reflight, according to SpaceX’s website.
It has a reusable design, which drives down costs by allowing SpaceX to refly the most expensive parts of the rocket.
Orbital class rockets are powerful enough to transport people and objects into Earth’s orbit and beyond.
The first Falcon 9 launch was on June 4, 2010. Since then, Falcon 9 has completed 608 missions, 562 total landings and 528 reflights, according to SpaceX.
At 5:52 a.m., the Falcon 9 rocket was launched from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
The station is nearly 300 miles south of Hilton Head as the crow flies. It’s located just beside the Kennedy Space Center, east of Orlando, Florida.
The rocket consists of three key components: a first stage booster, which launches it off the ground, a second stage booster, which delivers the payload into the Earth’s orbit and the payload, which holds the cargo — in this case, 29 Starlink satellites.
Starlink is the name of a satellite network developed by SpaceX to deliver high-speed internet from space.
About two and a half minutes after launching, the first stage booster separated from the second stage and began its descent back into Earth’s atmosphere.
The bright glow Beaufort County residents saw would have been the first-stage booster burning up because of extreme heat from atmospheric drag, based on when photos were taken and SpaceX’s timeline. The booster landed around 6 a.m. on an autonomous droneship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean, according to SpaceX.
Coastal residents of Georgia and Florida also spotted the bright glow in the sky this morning. From Florida, the descending rocket created what some news reports described as a “space jellyfish.”
The Wednesday morning rocket launch is also not the first rocket to be spotted from Hilton Head recently.
Linda Smith shared photos of a rocket in the sky on Sunday at 10:01 p.m. from Port Royal Plantation. According to SpaceX, the Sunday launch also delivered 29 Starlink satellites into Earth’s orbit.
This story was originally published March 4, 2026 at 1:09 PM.
