The enigmatic spiral that lit up the skies over New Caledonia on June 18 has been solved. Space launch expert Jonathan McDowell attributes this striking display to the degassing of a Chinese rocket.
Recent U.S. reports on unidentified aerial phenomena remind us that the skies still hold surprises. On June 18 around 6 p.m., residents of New Caledonia and Vanuatu in the southwest Pacific witnessed a stunning spiral hovering above the horizon.
The Caledonian Astronomical Association (ACA) shared on Facebook that they had "no explanation" for the event, noting a similar sighting in Norway in 2009.
Witness Nick Banbury described it as: "a beam of green light similar in color to the aurora with a mysterious rotating spiral at one end." He added, "This spiral then got bigger and bigger until it turned into a huge halo in the sky with the green beam extending down to Earth."
Initial speculation of a meteor was ruled out due to its 10-minute duration. Astrophysics expert Jonathan McDowell, who tracks global space launches, identified the Norway spiral as resulting from a failed Russian Bulava missile launch, later confirmed by Russian officials. The malfunction caused the exhaust to spin uncontrollably.
The Pacific spiral has a similarly grounded origin. Per Jonathan McDowell, it stemmed from the second stage of a Chinese Long March 2C rocket, launched June 18 from Xichang with four satellites: three classified Yaogan-30 remote sensing satellites and one commercial bird (per SpaceNews).
Post-mission, the stage vented residual fuel—UDMH and nitrous oxide—to safely depressurize the tank and avoid explosion. "This is the phenomenon you observed," the ACA confirmed in their Facebook update.
