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 19th November 2024. In addition, the rocket exhaust condensation cloud was... Read More
There are many examples of NOAA‘s GOES ABI detecting the spectral signatures of large rockets. These include GOES-S, GOES-T, GOES-U, GOES-U boosters, Starliner, Falcon 9, Ariane, Himawari-9, Antares, etc. If the rocket is large enough, there is often a signal in each of the 16 ABI bands. Of course the timing of the ABI scan... Read More
The GOES-U rocket launch on SpaceX Falcon Heavy provided an opportunity for GOES-East (16) and -West (18) to monitor the launch and booster re-entries. Both the operational GOES were taking special (research) ABI meso-scale sectors of the launch, with GOES-16 providing 1-min imagery and GOES-18 30-sec (both sectors). (More on how to submit... Read More
1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) images from all 16 of the ABI spectral bands along with a Rocket Plume RGB (above) displayed signatures of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket booster that launched GOES-U from NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 2126 UTC (5:26 PM EST) on 25 June 2024. A warm thermal signature of the rocket booster (moving rapidly... Read More
