The rare sight of SpaceX Launch: the bright orange glow of re-entry

Just past the spaceship’s 45-minute journey through space on Thursday, something eerie happened. As it hovered high above Earth’s oceans and clouds, the spacecraft’s silvery exterior was shadowed by a brilliant and fiery orange glow.

When a spacecraft reenters the atmosphere, the air beneath it becomes hot – hot enough that it turns into a plasma of charged particles as electrons are pulled away from the air molecules. The charged particles create picturesque glows, like neon signs.

But it’s unusual to see this happen almost in real time during a spaceflight. That plasma disrupts radio signals and disrupts communications.

Such blackouts happen, for example, when SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule returns to Earth from the International Space Station with its complement of four astronauts. Mission controllers must wait with bated breath to ensure the spacecraft’s heat shield has sustained and protected the crew during atmospheric reentry.

Until Starship succumbed to the intense forces of reentry on Thursday, SpaceX used its Starlink internet satellites to relay the live video feed. The Starlink satellites are in higher orbits, and it’s easier to send signals upwards – away from the plasma – than trying to communicate with antennas on the ground.

But Starship wasn’t the only spacecraft to give us insight into plasma heating in recent weeks. Varda Space, a startup developing technology for manufacturing in orbit, had cameras on a capsule that landed on Earth on February 21. Before landing on the ground by parachute, the Winnebago capsule recorded a daylight reentry. The company extracted the video recording from the capsule and shared it online: