{"id":39167,"date":"2020-12-09T23:59:57","date_gmt":"2020-12-09T23:59:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=39167"},"modified":"2021-12-27T16:33:15","modified_gmt":"2021-12-27T16:33:15","slug":"satellite-signatures-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/39167","title":{"rendered":"Satellite signatures of the Space-X Starship SN8 flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"GOES-17<\/a>

GOES-17 Visible, Near-Infrared and Shortwave Infrared images [click to play animation | MP4<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/div>Space-X<\/strong><\/a> conducted a test flight of its Starship SN8<\/strong><\/a> on 09 December 2020<\/strong><\/a>, which experienced a “Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly” upon landing — and 10-minute Full Disk sector GOES-17 (GOES-West)<\/em> Visible, Near-Infrared and Shortwave Infrared images (above)<\/strong> <\/em>displayed a bright visible signature and hot thermal signature of the landing site explosion (and also showed the eastward drift of the rocket booster condensation cloud produced during descent). GOES-17 was scanning the landing site at 22:52:38 UTC when it sampled these explosion signatures.<\/p>\n

A combination of GOES-16 (GOES-East)<\/em> 5-minute CONUS sector and 10-minute Full Disk sector image is shown below. Even though the satellite viewing angle or “zenith angle” was less for GOES-16 (39.22 degrees) than for GOES-17 (53.21 degrees), GOES-16 failed to capture signatures of the brief rocket landing explosion — in addition, the GOES-16 scanned the landing site nearly 1\/2 minute earlier than GOES-17, at 22:52:12 UTC (CONUS sector) and 22:52:14 UTC (Full Disk sector). However, the eastward-moving rocket descent condensation cloud was still evident.<\/p>\n

\"GOES-16<\/a>

GOES-16 Visible, Near-Infrared and Shortwave Infrared images [click to play animation | MP4<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/div>According to 00 UTC rawinsonde data<\/strong><\/a> from nearby Brownsville, Texas (below)<\/strong><\/em> a shift to westerly winds occurred at an altitude of 4200 meters (615 hPa) — indicating that the eastward-moving rocket booster condensation cloud existed within the middle troposphere.<\/p>\n

\"Plot

Plot of 00 UTC rawinsonde data from Brownsville, Texas [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>Thanks to Todd Beltracci (The Aerospace Corporation) for the tip regarding optimal GOES-17 scan timing to capture the rocket explosion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Space-X conducted a test flight of its Starship SN8 on 09 December 2020, which experienced a “Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly” upon landing — and 10-minute Full Disk sector GOES-17 (GOES-West) Visible, Near-Infrared and Shortwave Infrared images (above) displayed a bright visible signature and hot thermal signature of the landing site explosion (and also showed the eastward […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":39169,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,80,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-goes-16","category-goes-17","category-rocket-signatures"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39167"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43999,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39167\/revisions\/43999"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}