Readers of the Lwówek online news service witnessed a spectacular and initially frightening phenomenon. They saw the flying and burning rocket parts from the area around Gryfów Śląski.
As reported by the lwowecki.info service:
(...) Mrs. Karolina had the opportunity to see this unusual phenomenon as she and her partner were driving in the morning from Oleszna Podgórska through Ubocze to Gryfów Śląski. The woman admits that the sight was frightening, although now, knowing what it was, one can certainly say that it was spectacular. Earlier, we also received a video recording from Mr. Szymon.
The burning parts of the Falcon 9 rocket were also visible from Bolesławiec. A video documenting the incident can be viewed on the Kontakt24 service.
A recording documenting the flying rocket fragments and the part of the rocket that fell in Komorniki near Poznań was posted on X by Karol Wójcicki, a popularizer of science, astronomy enthusiast, photographer, traveler, and hunter of auroras and solar eclipses.
Warning: profanity can be heard in the video.
Falcon 9 rocket breaking up over Poland
Part of a Falcon 9 rocket that fell near Poznań
As it later turned out, rocket parts fell in three locations in the Greater Poland Voivodeship. Fortunately, no one was injured.
The Polish Space Agency issued a special statement on the matter, confirming that the incident had occurred:
The Polish Space Agency (POLSA), Space Security Department Team (DBK), confirms that during the night, between 04:46 and 04:48 on February 19, 2025, an uncontrolled atmospheric re-entry of a FALCON 9 R/B launch vehicle stage—object NORAD / COSPAR ID 62878 / 2025-022Y—occurred over Polish territory. The rocket stage, weighing approximately 4 tons, came from the Space X Starlink Group 11-4 mission, which launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on February 1, 2025.
The flight trajectory of this object was known to POLSA and the services responsible in Europe (EUSST, www.eusst.eu) for monitoring the risk of artificial space objects entering Earth's atmosphere.
In the remainder of its statement, the Polish Space Agency assures that it:
(...) continuously monitors and analyzes threats in space posed by artificial objects, including space rockets. POLSA informs the relevant services and institutions in the country about the current situation in space and detected threats. Situation reports concerning the prediction of atmospheric re-entry and satellite collisions in orbit are systematically prepared and delivered, among others, to the Ministry of Development and Technology, the Ministry of National Defence, the Ministry of the Interior and Administration, the Ministry of Infrastructure, and the Government Security Centre.