By Sue Gerberding
 
Memorial Day Weekend had a new kind of “fireworks” this year. The weekend was filled with sighting reports by Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witnesses who submitted more than 40 reports from around the world.

​Beginning on May 24, 2019, there was a spike in reports coming into the CMS database. It continued through the night into the early morning hours of the 25th, with a nearly record-breaking number of reports for that time period. Reports continued to come in on the 26th and the 27th.
 
Astute witnesses all reported a straight line of “dots,” as many as 20 – 100 white lights, moving across the local skies. Reports were received from Romania, the United Kingdom and Canada. Sightings across the U.S. included the States of Tennessee, New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Ohio, Maine, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Utah, Colorado, Oregon, New Mexico, California and Washington.  Many of the sightings occurred around midnight in each local time zone.
 
What was this mysterious line of white dots circling the globe? Turns out that Space X had previously launched a Falcon 9 rocket into space with a huge payload. The payload was 60 small “Starlink” satellites, launched from the rocket into low Earth orbit. These satellites are part of a new global Internet system. They were low enough, and bright enough, to be seen when launched into orbit around the Earth in any location in which the skies were clear. As the satellites circled the Earth, they began to spread apart, increasing the distance between each. This is why the initial reports stated 20-60 dots in a white line, and the later reports spotted but a few dots.
 
Photos and videos were submitted with a few of the sighting reports. A case from Romania had a video which was nearly identical to that from a Netherlands observer who submitted a video to SpaceWeather.com (to see the video follow the link, or go to SpaceWeather.com and put May 25, 2019 in the “Archives” date box: http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=25&month=05&year=2019 ).
 
For more on the new Space X (Elon Musk) initiative, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_(satellite_constellation).
 
Many thanks to all who submitted reports.