Social media users that evening reported seeing the rare neon lights just after 7:30pm, which coincided with when the launch company’s Globalstar-2 FM15 mission would have passed overhead.
The spirals were spotted in Queenstown and Auckland as well as Fiji, Samoa and New Caledonia.
SpaceX staged three Falcon 9 launches over the weekend period carrying 55 satellites into space.
The New Plymouth Astronomical Society – which operates out of an observatory in the Taranaki region on the west coast of the North Island – made the discovery after locals took to social media to share their photos.
“The spiral that was seen in the sky tonight around 7:30pm was most likely a fuel dump or exhaust plume from a SpaceX rocket launch,” said the group in a Facebook post.
“It is shown in the video below passing south of NZ just over an hour into its flight which would have been around 5:30, and would probably have passed again around 90-120 minutes later which would then have been around 7:30.”
The launch itself was shrouded in rumours it was carrying a secret government payload because the 700-kilogram Globalstar-2 satellite onboard was well below the carrying capacity of Falcon 9 that delivered it into orbit.
It also landed aboard the stronger Just Read The Instructions drone ship typically reserved for bigger payloads.
The Falcon 9 Block 5 variant was first launched in 2018 and has chalked up 101 successful launches. Block 5 is the fifth variant of the two-stage Falcon 9.
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