WHAT WAS THAT? SpaceX launch debris puts on light show across Southwest Florida

CREDIT: @jamesbuchanan27/TMX, Devon Walter Dulaney, Lauren Gail Janeway

The FOX 4 newsroom phones were ringing as viewers from North Port to Naples were reporting a strange glowing object or objects in the clear night sky Thursday night.

Turns out, it was the unmanned SpaceX Starship launched out of Boca Chica Beach, Texas and many of you sent us all kinds of cell phone video showing different vantage points of the failed Starship mission.

One of the SpaceX flight's goals was "stress-testing vulnerable areas across the vehicle" — translation: push the space vehicle to its limits to identify its points of failure. That meant this Starship launched with a significant number of heat shield tiles stripped off from the upper spacecraft vehicle, which rides atop a Super Heavy rocket booster.

Heat shield tiles are the black, hexagon-shaped pieces that cover the spacecraft’s belly. They’re designed to shield the vehicle from the extreme heat that builds up as the vehicle plunges back into the thickest part of Earth’s atmosphere during a process known as reentry.

The maneuver can heat up Starship’s exterior to more than 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit (1,427 degrees Celsius).

Some might recall damage to heat shield tiles contributed to the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia and the loss of 7 astronauts during re-entry back in February 2003.

Due to the widespread debris from Thursday's mission, the FAA will have to investigate what happened with this flight.

However, a SpaceX flight commentator assured livestream viewers that “We’ve got a lot of measures in place, like debris response areas, where we coordinate very closely with air traffic control. We have a lot of measures put (in place) before we ever launch a rocket to make sure that we’re keeping the public safe. Those worked last time and they’re actively in work right now.”

In fact, around 8:00pm Eastern, the FAA reported delays of as much as 45 minutes to flights departing Fort Lauderdale and Miami due to the launch debris. Earlier in the evening, a ground stop had been in effect at the airport in Orlando.

Thursday night's test flight was also carrying satellite "simulators" the company hoped to deploy to see how the Starship would accomplish such a task. However the last Starship test flight in January exploded 10 minutes into flight. The simulators are similar in size to the company's next generation of Starlink internet satellites.

Even though the Starship mission failed this time, there is something pretty incredible about watching the reusable Super Heavy booster as it returned to the launch platform Thursday night. Does it look like a video game? An animation? Either way, we don't mind watching it.