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Elon Musk’s final SpaceX launch of 2017 put on an amazing holiday light show

Southern California’s close encounter.

By Peter Kafka
thekevingreene via Instagram
Peter Kafka covers media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.

People used to pay attention when Elon Musk sent one of his rockets into space. Now it’s totally routine — up until Friday night, his SpaceX had flown 17 missions in 2017, and chances are you weren’t aware of any of them.

SpaceX’s 18th launch of the year was different.

Last night, some combination of the Falcon 9 rocket’s flight path and the Southern California sky created a fantastic light show that people captured on their phones and cameras.

And then they shared them on social.

Here’s Musk’s contribution. Two demerits for the monochromatic video; three bonus points for a caption that references multiple anxiety-producing news memes.

And here’s one from Liz Phair, because I wanted a 100 percent legit reason to reference Liz Phair in a Recode story this year. Just made it in at the buzzer:

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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