SpaceX Rocket Mystifies Las Vegas Locals

On Monday night, Las Vegas locals snapped tons of photos as a beam of light ripped through the dark sky, making tons of people question, "What is going on?" or "Are aliens finally invading us?"

Well, it turns out that the mysterious "alien invasion" was a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. So, maybe less intriguing but still an interesting sight to see.

According to 8 News Now, the launch took place around 6 p.m. Monday at the Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County, California. People in Las Vegas, northern Nevada, parts of Arizona, and southern Utah reported seeing the rocket.

The Vandenberg Space Force Base posted on social media that this is the "6th space launch and missile test from the United States Space Force’s West Coast Spaceport and Test Range at Vandenberg Space Force Base in 2025."

According to Space Affairs, there was a possibility that residents in Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Ventura counties would possibly hear one or more sonic booms during the launch. However, this depended on the weather conditions. This launch helped advance the U.S. Space Force's west coast operations, becoming their sixth launch of 2025. Last year, the base broke records with 51 launches from the facility.

This mission added more satellites to SpaceX's growing network. Sat News further reported that this is the "120th booster landing on Of Course I Still Love You – OCISLY and the 407th booster landing to date."

Sat News also said that Space X's Falcon 9 is scheduled to launch the Starlink Group 11-10’s 22 smallsats. The Starlink 11-10 payload will transport mini-satellites for, "Their second-generation high-speed low Earth orbit internet satellite constellation."

PayloadSpace.com reports Kathy Lueders, Starbase General Manager for SpaceX, said the team is targeting 25 starship launches in 2025. The cost of maintaining the starship program is $1.5 billion per year.