If You Saw this Over Missouri Last Weekend, It Wasn’t a UFO
It was bright and sure did look unusual, but if you saw it over Missouri last weekend, it was not a UFO.
I'm fairly certain that Dan Bush captured this video shared on the Missouri Skies YouTube channel. He frequently captures interesting sky phenomena with his backyard cameras. Here's how Dan (or whoever it was) described what you're about to see:
Yet another SpaceX satellite put on a show above Missouri last night around 1:15 a.m. CDT. As the satellite passed over Missouri it relit its engine and blew off some sort of smoke ring and large gas cloud. My meteor cameras recorded the event. The video shows what they recorded. The satellite was, I believe, the Globalstar FM15 which was launched about an hour or so earlier in the evening.
Sorry, E.T., but this time it wasn't you we can thank for weird sky things.
The official SpaceX website confirms what was mentioned about last weekend's event. As a matter of fact, they have a fairly regular schedule of launches you can follow or check when you think you've seen something not planetary flying over your head. Their Starlink satellites (which look like a bead of lighted pearls in the sky) account for many mistaken UFO reports on a weekly basis.
I love rational explanations of weird stuff. It's one way to clearly understand when you're seeing paranormal phenomena or (in this case) not.