Satellite signatures of the launch of SpaceX Starship Flight 14
The launch of SpaceX Starship Flight 14 occurred at 12:48 UTC on 28 September 2026, from their Starbase facility along the South Texas coast. 1-minute imagery was not available for this launch — as it was for several previous Starship launches, such as Flight 11 and Flight 9 — but 5-minute interval CONUS Sector GOES-19 (GOES-East) Water Vapor imagery at 1251 UTC (which was actually scanning the launch site at 12:52:20 UTC) captured the hot thermal signature of the Starship engines, along with their trail of hot water vapor as the rocket was ascending southeastward over the Gulf of Mexico (above).
An oblique view from GOES-18 (GOES-West) using a Full Disk scan True Color RGB image at 1250 UTC (below) — which was actually scanning the launch site at 12:52:29 UTC — depicted the lower-tropospheric rocket booster condensation cloud immediately off the Texas coast, in addition to the long shadow that was being cast westward across the Texas/Mexico border region (as the early morning sun was rising in the east).
