Keen-eyed stargazers last night caught a glimpse of a series of satellites, launched as part of a private telecoms programme.

Keila Cobham was outside the Collector’s Hill Apothecary in Devonshire at about 6.35pm when her daughter spotted lights in the sky.

She said: “It made no sound, there were uniform gaps between the lights and it maintained a certain speed until it disappeared.”

But the lights were not a sign of little green men from Mars, but a programme run by tycoon Elon Musk’s SpaceX project.

SpaceX launched a stack of 48 Starlink satellites on one of its Falcon 9 rockets on Thursday afternoon as part of an effort to create a worldwide satellite broadband service.

The firm earlier said it planned to send up at least 12,000 Starlink satellites over the next few years.

The Royal Gazette reported in September that Starlink was targeting coverage in Bermuda in 2022.