No it is not, but there was a lot of chatter by people across the net who thought it was. After the launch of the NROL-24 yesterday afternoon, the venting of fuel from the Centaur rocket was widely observed across the United States. The spectacular picture above of the event was taken by John Broussard and posted to a Cloudy Nights Telescope Reviews newsgroup (see http://tinyurl.com/3xwpkt).
There are two images of the fuel dump taken from the UK at http://www.distantstars.co.uk/gallery/Misc/. Both the payload and Centaur are visible as streaks. People saw and imaged this event from Louisiana to Florida to Canada to England.
Thanks to Ed Cannon in Austin, Texas, and the SEESAT newsgroup for their reporting on this unique event.
