It’s Raining SpaceX Debris in Poland

If you happened to be awake and looking at the sky at around 3:30 am in Northern Europe on Wednesday, you got quite the show. It was around that time that a Space X Falcon 9 rocket was making an uncontrolled reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere, with the fiery debris spotted in the sky by residents in Denmark, Sweden, and England, per the BBC. But it was Poland that got to see the aftermath up close and personal, as what is believed to be parts of the rocket crash-landed across the country.

Jasny, płonący obiekt przeleciał nad Polską. To prawie na pewno szczątki drugiego stopnia rakiety Falcon 9, która została wystrzelona z bazy sił powietrznych Vandenberg w Kalifornii i wynosiła na orbitę 22 satelity Starlink z grupy 11-4.

Autor nagrania: Marcin Gmerek pic.twitter.com/OSsEwyv4Cs

— Karol Wójcicki (@KarolWojcicki) February 19, 2025

Perhaps the most noteworthy part of the crash was a tank that was spotted by Adam Borucki, a warehouse owner in Komorniki, Poland who saw the charred barrel sitting in his backyard. He photographed the tank, which was about five-feet long and three-feet wide, and contacted the police who worked with Polish space agency Polsa to confirm it was part of the SpaceX rocket. According to the BBC, a similar tank was also found in a forest near Wiry.

Polsa determined that the crash was part of the second stage of a Falcon 9 rocket and that it reentered Earth’s atmosphere between 04:46 and 04:48. While most of the debris appears to have landed in Poland, there are reports suggesting some parts may have also landed in Germany and Ukraine. Thus far, no injuries have been reported from the falling rocket.

SpaceX is best known for its reusable booster rockets that are designed to have a controlled return back to Earth. But that is the first stage of the two-stage rocket. The second stage, which takes the payload to orbit, is meant to burn up and disintegrate upon reentry. But that doesn’t always happen—sometimes debris survives the fall and ends up making impact back on Earth. This isn’t even the first time parts of a Falcon 9 rocket have been found—a tank similar to the one found in Poland was spotted in Brazil following a 2014 launch. Another landed on a farm in Washington state back in 2021.

Usually, reentry for these rockets is designed to occur in a more controlled manner, allowing the parts to crash into the ocean, but that isn’t always how things go. In fact, SpaceX debris seems to be a growing problem. Earlier this year, the British islands of Turks and Caicos complained of rocket parts raining down on them. Australia has been dealing with occasional showers of SpaceX parts for a couple of years now, and Australian airline Qantas was forced to delay some flights by up to six hours earlier this year to avoid falling rocket debris. There is nothing worse than seeing falling hunks of metal in the forecast.