A bright, widening plume streaks across the evening sky above the courtyard. A SpaceX Starlink rocket launch that took place Feb. 10 created the visible trail. Photo credit: Dakota Tooley

Students anticipating tech rehearsals for the Winter Concert Feb. 10, were instead greeted by an unusual sight. The clear night sky was interrupted by a spacecraft that could be seen flying over the southwest wall of campus. The sighting, which occurred just after 6:10 p.m., quickly sparked curiosity and excitement among the students present. 

Many choir members were on their way to the Zeller Student Center when they stopped in the courtyard to stare up at the sky. Freshman Luna Huber-Verjan said she was walking with her friends when she spotted the spacecraft. 

“There was a lot of people gathered in the courtyard,” Huber-Verjan said. “We all got our phones out and started taking pictures because we thought it was really cool.” 

Junior Dakota Tooley said she saw the flying object initially shoot upwards, with a contrail similar to that of an airplane; then, the trail began to expand as it traveled farther across the sky. It emanated a bright white light and bits of debris or light seemed to be falling from it as well. Students said they were unsure of the object’s identity and thought it could be a satellite, a shooting star or some sort of nuclear rocket. Huber-Verjan captured a sentiment similar to what many students felt that evening. 

“We had no idea what it was,” Huber-Verjan said, “so we were kind of clueless.” 

Director of Engineering and Design Programs Mike Carter recounted watching the rocket exit the atmosphere from the campus parking lot. He said there were also a couple of helicopters in the air seemingly observing the launch path.

“You could see a bit of the trail from where [the rocket] had actually taken off, and that was a sort of thicker plume of smoke that was starting to dissipate in the air,” Carter said. “It was catching the sunlight from the sunset, so it was glowing this really neat sort of pinkish-purple color.”

The unidentified flying object turned out to be a launch from Elon Musk’s SpaceX by a rocket named Falcon 9. The trail and falling debris were not remnants of an alien craft, but actually satellites from a Starlink mission. According to Britannica, Starlink is a project that aims to provide high speed internet to hard-to-reach areas around the world using satellites in low-Earth orbit. This particular flight launched 23 new satellites.  

The flight launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Bakersfield, California, and landed at the Of Course I Still Love You drone ship located in Long Beach, California. According to KTLA, the flight itself lasted approximately nine minutes.

Multiple missions have been launched from this location since the beginning of 2025, some of which have produced bright, visible streaks in the sky over Southern California. Senior Alina Williams has seen these bright streaks in the sky two times before. She recalled earlier experiences that helped her recognize what she was seeing on Monday night. 

“I knew it was a rocket because I’ve seen it before somewhere else in LA, at home,” Williams said. “I think that was a few months ago now.”

Although the sight of a large object trailing through the air could be frightening, many students found it to be a unique experience. Tooley said she remembers looking up at the sky in awe. 

“I’d seen a rocket before, but not so close. It was really pretty,” Tooley said, “and I was like, that’s really crazy, because I’m on school campus and I’m looking at a real rocket.”