A series of bright lights observed streaking across the sky over parts of the United States on Sunday was most likely remnants of a SpaceX rocket re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, experts said.

Videos posted on social media and local news broadcasts showed multiple light trails moving rapidly through the night sky, leaving a glowing trail behind them. Some of the videos also recorded an audible sonic boom that accompanied the re-entry.

Experts from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, confirmed that the light show was most likely caused by fragments of SpaceX's Dragon cargo spacecraft returning to Earth after completing its resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

According to astronomer Jonathan McDowell, the lights were generated as pieces of the spacecraft collided with atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere, causing them to become extremely hot and emit the bright glowing trail. The sonic boom was created by the shockwaves generated by the spacecraft's rapid re-entry, which traveled faster than the speed of sound at that altitude.

Sunday's incident was not an isolated event and is quite common during spacecraft re-entry. Last May, a similar lightshow occurred when rocket boosters associated with SpaceX's Starlink satelliet.