On Aug. 7, 2023, residents across North Texas saw a strange set of lights flying through the sky. The object had many racing to social media warning their neighbors of a UFO above North Texas, but it was only a satellite.
Since whistleblower David Grusch claimed the U.S. government is concealing evidence of alien life, Americans seem to be waiting for a spaceship to land in their backyard. But this is no UFO, just Elon Musk’s SpaceX satellite. Around 9 p.m. last night, the satellite called Starlink was visible over North Texas, causing some Texans to fear the worst.
WFAA meteorologist Pete Delkus responded to the claims to clarify the origin of the strange lights.
Elon Musk’s creation is meant to assist in bringing high-speed broadband internet to areas where the internet is not always available. As of this month, SpaceX has over 2,300 of these satellites roaming above the sky and has many more planned to send up to space in the future.
But this isn’t the first time the satellite was mistaken for something extraterrestrial. In Sept. 2022, Local Profile reported that a similar panic ensued when Starlink-55 flew across the Texas skies.
In 2020 Local Profile reported that Texas actually offers a lengthy history of UFO sightings. As writer Pamela Colloff pointed out in her 1969 Texas Monthly story, Close Encounters of the Lone Star Kind, Texans have been reporting UFO sightings since 1878 and reported the first one touching down here in 1897, more than fifty years before Roswell’s infamous crash landing.
In 2013, there were three specific sightings that gained national attention. The Mutual UFO Network reported that jailers working at Johnson County Correctional Facility spotted what they thought was a UFO with an unusual triangular shape. During the same year, 7,182 speculated UFO sightings were reported in Texas.
If you hope to catch a glimpse of the satellite you can visit Find Starlink to see where the famous light source will be next. On Aug. 8, 2023, at 9:45 p.m. the satellite is expected to be visible from Collin County.
