‘Space jellyfish’ lights up Tarlac skies

A glowing, “comet-like” formation seen over Tarlac and other parts of the Philippines on Tuesday night, 12 May 2026, was likely caused by China’s launch of a new Spacesail satellite group aboard a modified Long March 6 rocket.

China’s state-run Xinhua reported that the rocket lifted off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center at 7:59 p.m. Beijing and Philippine time, successfully sending the satellite group into its preset orbit for the Spacesail Constellation, a commercial low-Earth orbit satellite internet network.

The sighting coincided with reports from residents who saw a bright, jellyfish-like plume in the night sky, including motorists along the southbound lane of TPLEX at around 8 p.m.

The phenomenon, often called a “space jellyfish,” occurs when sunlight illuminates high-altitude rocket exhaust while the ground below is already dark.

“Yung exhaust plume ng rocket, naliwanagan ng araw sa taas ng atmosphere kahit madilim na sa ground. Nagkakalat yung usok kaya parang pusit/jellyfish na glowing,” JohnPaul Sardañas explained.

The launch was identified by Next Spaceflight as SpaceSail Polar Group 09 aboard a Long March 6A from Taiyuan at 11:59 UTC, or 7:59 p.m. Philippine time.

The Spacesail Constellation, formerly linked to the G60 Starlink project, is being developed as China’s answer to global satellite internet networks such as SpaceX’s Starlink. Reuters reported that SpaceSail aims to deploy up to 15,000 satellites by 2030.