The WTOP newsroom started getting calls from listeners across the D.C. region about a bright object in the sky around 5:30 a.m. Tuesday.
I immediately suspected that what our callers had seen was the launch of the Polaris Dawn mission from Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39A, which is used by SpaceX to launch its missions.
The vehicle launched at 5:23 a.m., and it took about 8 minutes for the Crew Dragon spacecraft to reach orbit via the Falcon 9 two-stage rocket.
To verify my suspicion, I went to the American Meteor Society’s “Pending Fireball Log,” which gathers sightings of bright objects in the sky that observers believe may be meteors.
Sure enough, dozens of reports across the D.C. region — some with wonderful images — confirmed it was the Polaris Dawn rocket ascending to orbit.
You can browse these reports yourself, as they are listed in the log under “Pending Report #352671.” There really are some great pictures to see.
Observers were able to see this sky-spectacle because even though they were in darkness, the Falcon 9 was spewing flames and gasses from its nine Merlin first-stage engines in sunlight high above Earth. Second stage separation is impressive to see as well, and eventually the rocket becomes lost to sight.
You can see what it looked like, in the pictures I took of a Falcon 9 rocket launching Crew 2 to the International Space Station on April 23, 2021. The time I took those pictures was almost exactly the same time of Tuesday’s launch.
The Polaris Dawn is a five-day mission that will see its four person commercial astronaut crew scheduled to fly at an altitude of over 800 miles, making them the first humans to go that high since Apollo 17 went to the moon in December 1972.
Two of the crew will also attempt a first ever spacewalk by commercial astronauts.
WTOP will be posting highlights of the mission, as they become available.
Thanks to those WTOP listeners who called in, you never know what the sky will offer.
Follow Greg Redfern on Facebook, X and his daily blog to keep up with the latest news in astronomy and space exploration.
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