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Satellite signatures of the NASA/SpaceX Crew-12 launch

By Scott Bachmeier •

16-panel display of 30-second GOES-19 images from all 16 ABI spectral bands, from 1014-1020 UTC on 13 February [click to play animated GIF]

The NASA/SpaceX Crew-12 Mission to the International Space Station was launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1015 UTC on 13 February 2026 — and overlapping 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sectors from GOES-19 (GOES-East) provided 30-second images from all 16 ABI spectral bands (above). Since this was a nighttime launch, brighter white signatures of the Falcon 9 rocket booster were seen in Visible (02) and Near-Infrared (03-06) spectral bands as the rocket ascended to to northeast — while warm rocket booster thermal signatures were apparent in many of the Infrared spectral bands (07-16). In addition, a cooler signature of the rocket’s condensation cloud was evident in many of the Infrared spectral bands, as the cloud drifted southeastward just off the coast.

In spite of an oblique satellite viewing angle, many of the same rocket booster signatures were seen in 1-minute GOES-18 (GOES-West) imagery (below). Note: the 16-panel GOES-19 and GOES-18 images are displayed in their respective native satellite projections.

16-panel display of 1-minute GOES-18 images from all 16 ABI spectral bands, from 1014-1020 UTC on 13 February [click to play animated GIF]

30-second images of GOES-19 Rocket Plume RGB images created using Geo2Grid (below) provided a larger-scale view of the rocket booster signature as the Falcon 9 traveled northeast away from the launch site.

30-second GOES-19 Rocket Plume RGB images, from 1014-1020 UTC on 13 February [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

A comparison of 1-minute Rocket Plume RGB images from both GOES-18 and GOES-19 (below) demonstrated the effect of parallax — since the satellite viewing angle from GOES-18 was 68.98 degrees from the southwest (compared to only 33.56 degrees from the south-southeast from GOES-19), the apparent location of the high-altitude Rocket Plume RGB signature was displaced much farther east as viewed from GOES-18 (1018 UTC images). Note: the GOES-18/GOES-19 Rocket Plume RGB images are re-mapped to a common projection.

1-minute Rocket Plume RGB images from GOES-18 (left) and GOES-19 (right), from 1014-1020 UTC on 13 February [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

Categories: Geo2Grid, GOES-18, GOES-19, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images, Rocket signatures