SpaceX Rocket Sonic Boom Shakes Southern California Skies

Photo: AFP

People living in Southern California got worried on Saturday night when they heard a loud sonic boom all over the area. The loud noise happened because a SpaceX rocket was coming back down through the sky.

Just before the boom, SpaceX posted a message on X (formerly Twitter) to let everyone know that their spacecraft called Dragon was going to land in the ocean off the southern coast of California around 10:44 p.m.

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Earlier that day, the Dragon spacecraft had left the International Space Station. The ship was carrying about 6,700 pounds of supplies for the crew, scientific experiments, and equipment that had been taken up to the space station. It arrived there on April 22 after launching from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 21.

People living near the Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County have been hearing these sonic booms more often lately. The local newspaper said both the U.S. Space Force and SpaceX have admitted this is a problem.

Unfortunately, it looks like people won’t get a break soon. Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, said his company plans to launch more than 90 rockets from Vandenberg by the year 2026. Military officials have also said they won’t lower the noise from these launches.

SpaceX is a private company that builds and launches rockets and spacecraft. The company has been in the news recently because two of its rockets exploded one after the other.

In January, a Starship rocket failed just minutes after launching from SpaceX’s facility in Texas. Then, two months later, another rocket blew up after launch from the same place. This caused flights to be stopped for a while and raised concerns about dangerous pieces of rocket debris falling back to Earth.