5 case files, newest first.
At 3:56 a.m. on June 2, 2016, a fireball lit up the Southwest, and sonic booms were heard across the Phoenix area. More than 400 people reported it. It wasn't a launch or a re-entry. Radar tracked falling stones, and fifteen meteorites were recovered. They were named Dishchii'bikoh.
At 7:21 p.m. on October 7, 2018, people across metro Phoenix photographed a strange glowing streak in the western sky. It was a Falcon 9 launched from Vandenberg in California, lit by a sun that had set over Arizona more than an hour earlier, and its first stage flew back to land at the base for the first time.
In September 1898, an elderly woman on the east side of Phoenix asked the county for protection from someone pelting her home with stones. Crowds came to watch, two rival papers covered it, and nine months later the case had still never been explained.
A golden-trailed fireball crossed the Salt River Valley at dinnertime on 6 October 1906 and broke up with a boom. Callers feared an explosion, the Weather Bureau observer timed it with his watch, and Tucson and Phoenix each said it passed right over them.
Just after 7 p.m. on September 28, 2025, a long, glowing streak drifted across Arizona from Flagstaff to Tucson, and some people asked if it was a comet. It was a Falcon 9 that had launched from Vandenberg a few minutes earlier, lit by a sun that had already set.
