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Satellite signatures of the SpaceX Starship Test Flight 6

By Scott Bachmeier •

Multi-panel display of all 16 ABI spectral bands from GOES-16, from 2056-2111 UTC on 19 November [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

A display of all 16 ABI spectral bands from GOES-16 (GOES-East) showed that a hot thermal signature of the SpaceX Starship Falcon Heavy rocket booster was apparent in Near-Infrared & Infrared bands 04-16 at 2101 UTC during its Test Flight 6 on 19 November 2024. In addition, the rocket exhaust condensation cloud was seen in all 16 spectral bands, as it began to drift northeast away from the Starbase launch site along the south coast of Texas..

True Color RGB images (source) of the rocket exhaust condensation cloud as viewed from both GOES-18 (GOES-West) and GOES-16 are shown below (the images are displayed in the native projection of each satellite). Since the launch was late in the afternoon, the higher-altitude portions of the condensation cloud cast long shadows onto the water surface off the Texas coast.

True Color RGB images from GOES-18 (left) and GOES-16 (right), from 2150-2300 UTC on 19 November [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

Categories: GOES-16, GOES-18, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images, Rocket signatures