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 19 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
