Anyone who looked up to the skies about 6:09 PM on Monday night would’ve been greeted with a curious sight: A trail of fire and smoke blazing through the sky.

Not to disappoint, but those trails weren’t left by some alien spaceship: they were left by a rocket.

It launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County (Any seniors going to UC Santa Barbara, you’d be just an hour away from every space launch there), a few hundred miles northwest of Torrance, slowly making its way south, leaving a trail of smoke in its wake.

The ship in question was one of SpaceX’s Falcon 9s, the first rocket class that’s reusable.

Wait, what? Reusable rockets? You mean like reusable bags, except instead it’s a 1-million-pound hunk of steel that gets shot into space?

Yes, they’re exactly what they sound like. Falcon 9 rockets are recovered after each flight and can be used time and time again, driving down the already astronomical costs of spaceflight.

Since the start of space travel, rocket parts that are discarded mid flight are usually left to fall into the ocean — a process that SpaceX avoids entirely by taking the more unconventional route: landing them back on Earth.

It’s taken many years, and many unfortunate accidents of rockets tipping over and blowing up (No one has been harmed in the process, their flights are all unmanned), but the company has become the first to allow for rockets to be entirely reusable.

This is all part of their goal to make space travel more mainstream — though time will tell how and when these goals will come to fruition.

The specific launch that happened Monday night was to transport Starlink satellites for SpaceX’s internet service, but it rewarded all of us on the ground with quite the spectacle.

If you happened to miss this launch, SpaceX routinely uses Vandenberg’s base for their rocket launches, so keep an eye on their schedule to catch the next one.