Seeing strange lights in the sky? It’s SpaceX Starlink passing over Kansas City area
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It’s not UFOs you’re seeing the sky Thursday night in the Kansas City area.
Not to worry, it’s just a SpaceX Starlink satellite traveling over the Kansas City region.
FOX4 has received multiple calls and messages asking about the strange lights.
Starlink satellites, first launched in 2019, are used to provide broadband internet to customers around the globe. Following multiple launches of additional satellites each year, SpaceX has roughly 2,000 now orbiting Earth.
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There are a few online resources that allow you to find out when you can see Starlink satellites parade across the sky.
First, it’s important to note that when you see a line of satellites, they won’t stay like that forever. They’ll eventually separate to find their own orbits. Because the chains travel so quickly, you may even have the chance to have multiple sightings in one night.
Here are three sites that let you see if satellites will be near you anytime soon.
One is Find Starlink, available both as a website and a mobile app. You can track nearby satellite chains in one of three ways.
First, you can search your location. Major cities are available, so if your hometown doesn’t show up, try a nearby metro. You can also enter your coordinates under the “By Coordinates” tab. If you’d rather view where the satellites are in general, there’s also a “Live Map” tab for that.
If you search by city name or coordinates, you’ll be taken to a results page. Here you will find dates and times when you may have good, average, or poor visibility of a Starlink parade. According to the developer, Find Starlink tracks only the first satellite in every chain, otherwise “the results page will be very cluttered.”
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Also available online and via the App Store, satellitemap.space relies on tracking data available through space-track.org to show Starlink locations.
