Reports of a bright, red “fireball” streaking across the sky over Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and elsewhere were widely spread across social media Thursday night into Friday morning.

Many, including a number of meteorologists, made the understandable assumption what flashed across the sky was a meteor, part of the Perseid meteor shower which began in mid-July, runs through the beginning of September, and is expected to peak this weekend.

Evidence, however, suggests what was seen overnight was not a natural phenomenon, but man-made.

On May 21, the AXIOM-2 mission to the International Space Station launched from Kennedy Space Center atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

Eight days after it successfully docked with the ISS, AXIOM-9 returned to Earth, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Panama City, Fla.

What was likely seen overnight was debris from the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, according to information from Space.com, Aerospace.org and other sources.

Aerospace.org’s model had the debris reentering Earth’s atmosphere shortly after 10 p.m. (CST) on Aug. 10, with a margin of error of plus or minus 10 hours, putting last night’s sightings right in that window.

SATVIEW.org predicted the AXIOM-2 debris would reenter the atmosphere just after 5 p.m. (CST) on Friday, with a margin of error of plus or minus 8 hours.

Most space debris burns up during reentry, which explains the “fireball” used by many to describe what they witnessed Thursday night.

Occasionally, space junk will fall to Earth, such as a pressure vessel from the second stage of a Falcon 9 rocket which landed on a farm in central Washington in April 2021. In that instance, many who saw the falling debris reported it as a “shooting star.”

If you missed out on seeing the flying space junk, however, you still have a great opportunity to witness the Peresid meteor shower.

The Peresids are created by the Earth passing through the debris trail of the comet Swift-Tuttle and is capable of producing as many as 50 to 100 meteors per hour in a clear sky, according to NASA.

The shower will be visible as early as 10 p.m. Saturday and grow more plentiful as the night goes on.