KEY POINTS

  • Residents of Montana reported seeing an unusual row of bright lights in the night sky Saturday
  • The flashing lights are believed to be Starlink satellites launched by SpaceX
  • SpaceX sent an additional 60 Starlink satellites into orbit in October

Montana residents spotted a mysterious string of UFO-like lights in the night sky over the weekend.

One resident named Kara Baszler captured a video of the unusual lights she and her husband saw when they were looking up at the night sky on Saturday. She told local news outlet KPAX that the lights kept reappearing and then disappearing.

She added that she and her husband spotted the mysterious phenomenon at around 8 p.m., and it went on for a few minutes near Kelly Island in Missoula, Montana.

Baszler said she did not believe in aliens so she assumed that the flashing lights were a part of a military training exercise. But there may be a much simpler explanation for the mysterious "UFOs": they were actually satellites from SpaceX that were passing overhead.

In October, Elon Musk's aerospace company launched an additional 60 Starlink satellites from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. With this launch, SpaceX has sent a total of 895 Starlink satellites into orbit since 2019.

"SpaceX is developing a low latency, broadband internet system to meet the needs of consumers across the globe," the company stated on its website of the Starlink project. "Enabled by a constellation of low Earth orbit satellites, Starlink will provide fast, reliable internet to populations with little or no connectivity, including those in rural communities and places where existing services are too expensive or unreliable."

This isn't the first time Starlink satellites have been mistaken for UFOs. In December 2019, residents of Browning, Rocky Boy and Lodgepole in Montana also shared photos of a row of bright lights across the night sky.

At the time, meteorologist John Belski of TV station WLKY reported that SpaceX had just launched two sets of satellites. Each launch had 60 small crafts that will orbit the Earth at an altitude of more than 300 miles, KRTV reported.

"The bright dots in the sky are satellites, approximately 175 miles above the surface of the Earth. They appear bright due to their solar array reflecting sunlight back to the dark side of the globe," meteorologist Will Haenni of station WWMT posted.

This won't be the last time people will be seeing mysterious bright lights in the sky.

Last year, SpaceX was granted permission by the Federal Communications Commission to launch as many as 12,000 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit, Space.com reported. Musk's company also applied to the International Telecommunication Union for approval of up to 30,000 additional satellites.