On the evening of March 15, 2026, people across Sikkim and the Darjeeling hills in northeastern India looked up to see a glowing, jellyfish-shaped light drifting across the sky. It lasted five to seven minutes, long enough for plenty of phone videos, and set off a wave of UFO speculation online.

The explanation is one that has come up again and again in recent years. According to NewsBytes, the light was most likely the exhaust plume from a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch from Florida. When a rocket fires at high altitude around twilight, the ground below is already dark, but the plume, tens of miles up, is still in sunlight. The gas spreads out into a translucent, glowing cloud with a bright core and trailing tendrils, which is exactly why these sightings get called jellyfish. Depending on the rocket’s path, they can be seen from very far away.

Similar “jellyfish” have been reported over the American Southwest, Mexico and elsewhere after twilight launches, and they reliably produce UFO reports before anyone checks the launch schedule.

The report didn’t name the specific mission, and no space agency commented on the Indian sighting.