Sonali Tiwary
Residents across Florida and the US Southeast woke up Tuesday morning to a glowing, jellyfish-shaped cloud drifting across the pre-dawn sky. It was not a missile test, a chemical leak, or an atmospheric anomaly. It was a routine SpaceX rocket launch caught at a specific geometric moment that turned exhaust vapor into a natural light show.
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Space Launch Complex 40 at 6:35 a.m. EDT on October 13, 2026. The mission, CRS-35, is a cargo resupply run to the International Space Station carrying a Dragon spacecraft loaded with equipment and supplies, including the final pair of International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Arrays. Booster B1096, flying for the eighth time, was set to return to Landing Zone 40 (LZ-40) at Cape Canaveral after stage separation. Dragon is scheduled to dock autonomously with the ISS's Harmony module on October 15 at approximately 11 a.m. EDT, roughly 52 hours after launch.
Florida residents, coastal commuters, and early-morning skywatchers across the US East Coast can dismiss any hazard concerns after witnessing Tuesday's luminous atmospheric glow. The visual effect was a sunlit rocket exhaust plume—not a weather event or structural cloud formation. Stargazers planning to photograph future dawn or dusk rocket launches should track pre-dawn SpaceX launch windows from Cape Canaveral. Observers near Brevard County should also anticipate brief sonic booms during booster landings at Cape Canaveral.
What causes a space jellyfish cloud in the sky? The effect occurs when a rocket launches in the brief window before dawn or after dusk, when the rocket climbs into sunlight while observers on the ground remain in relative darkness. The rocket's exhaust—primarily water vapor and carbon dioxide—expands rapidly into the thin upper atmosphere. Sunlight striking that expanding cloud from below the horizon illuminates it against the dark sky beneath. Observers on the ground see a glowing blue-white bulb with shimmering trailing filaments—the "jellyfish." Tuesday's launch hit that window precisely, which is why the effect was visible from Florida up through the Carolinas. The conditions are predictable in principle: launch timing, altitude, the geometry of sunrise, and the observer's location all factor into whether the plume is visible.
Photographs taken with a long-exposure night mode reveal more vivid colors than the naked eye perceives in those conditions. SpaceX launches from Cape Canaveral frequently during periods of heavy ISS supply demand, so the SpaceX launch schedule page lists upcoming Falcon 9 windows for anyone wanting to watch for a similar effect. For more on CRS-35's science cargo and what the IROSA arrays do aboard the ISS, the mission details are covered in the pre-launch briefing.
Dragon's ISS docking is scheduled for October 15. Coverage will follow if any anomalies arise.
