SpaceX rocket debris crashes into Poland
Around 03:30 GMT on Wednesday, a fiery object streaking through the air lit up the skies over northern Europe.
“I immediately thought of a sci-fi movie where it looked like a troop formation about to attack,” Simon Eriksson, a workman from Malmo, told the Swedish state broadcaster.
The spectacle was caused by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, with reports of sightings across Denmark, Sweden, and England.
Debris from the rocket later crashed into Poland, and experts suggest fragments may have also landed in Ukraine.
At approximately 10:00 local time (09:00 GMT), Adam Borucki discovered a charred tank, measuring roughly 1.5m by 1m, behind his warehouse in Komorniki, Poland. The debris appeared to have damaged a light fixture in the warehouse yard.
Borucki alerted the police, who, in collaboration with the Polish space agency Polsa, identified the object as part of a Falcon 9 rocket manufactured by Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX.
“We are investigating how the object ended up in this location, but the important thing is that no-one was harmed,” police spokesperson Andrzej Borowiak said.
A similar piece of debris was reportedly found in a forest near the Polish village of Wiry, according to Polish police.
Polsa, the Polish space agency, confirmed that “an uncontrolled re-entry of the Falcon 9 rocket’s second stage occurred between 04:46 and 04:48 on February 19, 2025, over Poland.”
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, designed for reusability, is used to transport people and payloads into Earth’s orbit. The debris originated from a Falcon 9 rocket launched by SpaceX on February 1 from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
“It was supposed to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere in a controlled manner and crash into the Pacific Ocean,” Harvard University astrophysicist Dr Jonathan McDowell told the BBC.
“But the engine failed. We’ve seen it orbiting Earth for the past few weeks and we were anticipating an uncontrolled re-entry today, which is what people saw burning in the sky.
“The debris zipped over England at around 17,000 mph, then parts of Scandinavia then parts crashed into eastern Europe at a few hundred miles an hour.”
Space debris from rockets and satellites re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere several times a month. Usually pieces of space debris are entirely burned up by Earth’s atmosphere but larger piece can fall to earth. According to Dr McDowell, an uncontrolled large rocket re-entry is rare and has the potential to be dangerous.
“So far, we’ve been lucky and no-one has been hurt but the more we put into the Earth’s orbit, the more likely it is that our luck will run out,” he said.
“This is the fourth incident recently with a SpaceX Falcon which is causing concern. It looks like glitches like this engine failure are becoming more common.”
So far large pieces of debris have been confirmed in Poland but Dr McDowell suspects that pieces have crashed into western Ukraine where the comet-like streaks of light in the sky “were clearly visible”.
“It’s quite the omen for how our civilisation is changing,” he added.
The BBC has approached Space X for comment.