The lights, perfectly aligned, were spotted in northern Italy, with several townspeople taking to social media to claim the spooky sighting to be of extraterrestrial nature. It has since been confirmed, however, that the lights were part of Elon Musk’s second group of Starlink satellites launched into orbit last November as part of his huge internet project.
Experts from the Italian astronomical observatory explained: “It is the Starlink satellites that Elon Musk launched. You can sleep peacefully.”
Stalin is based on a constellation of thousands of satellites that serve telecommunications positioned in a low Earth orbit.
Those who saw the satellites took to social media to have it a guess as to what was beaming across the night sky.
“The camera on my phone doesn’t capture it, but there are lights lined up in a strange way.”
Mr Musks’s Starling satellite project is colossal, with thousands of satellites planned to shoot into space in the next few years.
In October, documents were leaked that showed correspondence between SpaceX and telecommunications authorities Mr Musk’s plans to launch 30,000 small saltines into space.
His plans will be required to go through a series of hoops from other telecommunications and space bodies before SpaceX gets the green light to soldier on with its plans.
Thus, it may be several years until all of the satellites are fully launched into the Earth’s orbit.
Of the 12,000 granted at the time, 60 had been deployed into space.
The new batch seen from the north of Italy were likely part of the 12,000.