English (UK)
Last June 24th, at 00h13 UT, while we were celebrating one of the most magical nights of the year (St. John's Night), the sky was crossed by a blazing trail with a ghostly appearance. It wasn’t a meteorite or a natural phenomenon, but the reentry of the second stage of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, part of the Transporter-14 mission.
External cameras from Calar Alto Observatory in Almería registered this event.
This mission, launched on June 23, 2025 from Vandenberg, carried 70 payloads, including more than 150 capsules containing human remains and DNA samples, in collaboration with the company Celestis.
Although it may seem like a poetic tribute, from our perspective, it represents yet another act of contamination of the celestial heritage. The night sky is a common good, a window to the universe that we must preserve. The proliferation of artificial objects and space debris threatens the integrity of our astronomical observations and the enjoyment of the heavens by future generations.
In the early hours of this morning, yet another launch was visible in the skies over Calar Alto.
Just as a suggestion: watch the videos (undoubtedly impressive) and take a moment to reflect:
Do we want a sky full of human and technological debris?
Where do we draw the line between technology and pollution?
Below are the videos registered with the external cameras operated at Calar Alto Observatory in Almería. First two videos are the St. John's Night, while the last two videos correspond with the second event. All videos are sped up.
Calar Alto (CAHA) fireball detection station, together with the one at the Observatory of Sierra Nevada (IAA-CSIC) and others placed at different locations in Spain, are part of the S.M.A.R.T. project led by Professor José María Madiedo (IAA) to track that kind of objects. Specifically, Calar Alto (CAHA) station and the one at Sierra Nevada (IAA-CSIC) constitute a collaboration agreement between the IAA researcher José María Madiedo and both institutions.