Satellite signatures of the NASA Roman Space Telescope launch
1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-19 (GOES-East) images (above) showed signatures of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket booster following the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launch from Kennedy Space Center at 1126 UTC on 30 August 2026.
1 minute after launch, at 1127 UTC, a multi-panel display of imagery from all 16 ABI spectral bands on GOES-19 (below) revealed either a reflective signature (in Visible band 02) or a thermal signature (in Near-Infrared bands 03-06, and Infrared bands 07-16) as the Falcon Heavy rocket was ascending just off the Florida coast.
1 minute later, at 1128 UTC, a thermal signature of the rocket booster was apparent in Near-Infrared bands 04-06 and Infrared bands 07-16 (below). In the 3 Water Vapor spectral bands (08/09/10), a short trail of moisture-laden rocket exhaust was seen immediately behind the leading hot thermal signature of the booster engines.
A common practice with Falcon Heavy rockets is to have the 2 side core boosters perform a series of “boostback burns” to slow their descent in order to make a landing on a floating water platform (or in this case, back to Kennedy Space Center), to enable their recycling for future flights. A signature of dual side core boostback burns appeared at 1133 UTC in imagery from several of the Near-Infrared and Infrared spectral bands (below).
Many of the aforementioned signatures were seen in a larger-scale view of 1-minute GOES-19 Rocket Plume RGB images, created using Geo2Grid (below), including: (1) the hot thermal signature at launch appeared as a cluster of brighter red pixels at 1126 UTC; (2) at 1129 UTC a long trail of the rocket exhaust moisture plume (brighter shades of yellow-green) was very apparent, with the first of 3 side core boostback burn signatures appearing in the middle of the plume, and the center core thermal signature appearing at the leading edge of the plume; (3) the brighter yellow-green final side core boostback burn signature appeared at 1132 UTC, After the Falcon Heavy departed from the satellite scene, note how the western portion of the rocket’s trailing moisture plume (pale shades of yellow) was advected slowly northward, while the eastern portion of the moisture plume (which was at a higher altitude) was advected more rapidly southward — an effect of wind shear with height.
A stepped sequence of imagery from all 16 ABI spectral bands is shown below.