A mysterious orb of light with a sprawling, glowing tail was spotted soaring across the Big Apple skies early Tuesday morning, igniting theories that aliens were preparing to touch down.<br /><br />Conspiracists were right: the strange object was, in fact, a spaceship — but not the kind with little green men inside.<br /><br />Something similar was seen in Pennsylvania shortly after the Polaris Dawn launched from the Kennedy Space Station in Florida at 5:23 a.m., carrying NASA scientists and a daredevil civilian who will be the first non-astronauts to perform a spacewalk.<br /><br />The crew — including second-time space flier, billionaire Jared Isaacman — will spend the next five days in outer space, setting their sights far beyond the International Space Station.<br /><br />The spaceship can be seen in videos across the East Coast making its way steadily across the sky, seemingly moving horizontally instead of toward the stars.<br /><br />In New York, some early birds unaware of the SpaceX journey questioned whether it was something other-worldly.<br /><br />“That’s aliens dawg!” one person wrote.<br /><br />“There are enough extraterrestrials in NYC if you ask me,” wrote another.<br /><br />The Polaris Dawn is setting off on a record-breaking journey that, at an altitude of 870 miles, would surpass the Earth-lapping record set during NASA’s Project Gemini in 1966. Only the 24 Apollo astronauts who flew to the moon have ventured farther.<br /><br />The ship will spend 10 hours at the height, filled with extreme radiation and riddled with debris before reducing orbit to about 435 miles. <br /><br />The spacewalk — often considered one the riskiest stunts while in orbit — is scheduled for Thursday.<br /><br />The four-person crew is equipped with SpaceX’s latest spacewalking suits given that the entire Dragon capsule would be depressurized during the two-hour spacewalk, exposing the whole crew to the ruthless vacuum of space.
