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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, varying shades of white signatures of the Falcon 9 rocket booster were seen in the Visible (02) and Near-Infrared (03-06) spectral bands as the rocket ascended to the northeast — while warmer rocket booster thermal signatures were apparent in many of the Infrared spectral bands (07-16) [10:17:25 UTC 16-panel images]. In addition, a cooler signature of the rocket’s condensation cloud was evident in many of the Infrared spectral bands, as that cloud drifted southeastward just offshore.

In spite of an oblique satellite viewing angle, many of the same Falcon 9 rocket booster signatures were seen in 1-minute GOES-18 (GOES-West) imagery (below) [1016 UTC 16-panel images]. (The 16-panel GOES-19 and GOES-18 images were 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]

A slightly longer animation of 30-second GOES-19 Nighttime Microphysics RGB images from the CSPP GeoSphere site (below) showed the aforementioned rocket booster condensation cloud (darker shades of blue) drifting southeast just offshore — along with the hot thermal signature (darker purple pixel) of the rocket booster landing burn as it returned to the launch site at 1023 UTC.

30-second GOES-19 Nighttime Microphysics RGB images (with/without a map overlay), from 1014-1023 UTC on 13 February [click to play animated GIF]

30-second 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) nicely 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 to the east as viewed from GOES-18 (1018 UTC images). (The GOES-18/GOES-19 Rocket Plume RGB images were 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