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The picture shown is a screenshot during the recent launch of SpaceX's SN9 from a live stream, and I noticed that a black ring fell off the exhaust/engine. It only shows up for around a frame or two and I couldn't find any related information on it. My question is what that was?

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    $\begingroup$ Interesting. This could be related to the engine failure. Or, it could be completely unrelated :-D Roadside rocket science is fun. $\endgroup$
    – Jörg W Mittag
    Feb 6, 2021 at 12:02
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    $\begingroup$ It's clearly not bird shaped. The 2nd stage F9 Merlin engines have rings at the end of their much longer and vibration-prone vacuum nozzles that keeps them from vibrating too much, but I don't think that this could be anything like that. $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Feb 6, 2021 at 13:55
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    $\begingroup$ Maybe it's an o-ring falling off something closer to the camera and not actually in the plume? Something in the plume would have been moving extremely fast. Can you give a video link and time? $\endgroup$
    – Organic Marble
    Feb 6, 2021 at 14:31
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    $\begingroup$ Hello everyone, thank you for the responses. I actually found this in a youtube video by Scott Manley. You can see this frame at around 5:01 on the lower right. $\endgroup$
    – Philip.P
    Feb 6, 2021 at 15:08
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    $\begingroup$ Thanks for the info. I got the original, less-annoying-than-Manley video from SpaceX's website and extracted a bunch of frames around the one you show. Unfortunately this didn't show any other positions of the object. My guess, but only a guess, is still that it's not in the plume. $\endgroup$
    – Organic Marble
    Feb 6, 2021 at 16:34

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