Falcon 9 Launch Over the East Coast Illuminates the Pre-Dawn Sky
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, transforming the early morning sky into an expansive glowing jellyfish visible across the eastern United States on October 13, 2026. The mission carried a Dragon spacecraft on SpaceX’s 35th commercial resupply services flight for NASA, delivering over 6,300 pounds of scientific investigations, supplies, and hardware to the International Space Station.
The luminous atmospheric display occurred because the rocket launched near dawn, at 6:33 a.m. EDT. As the Falcon 9 climbed above Earth along a northward trajectory matching the orbit of the space station, sunlight reached its expanding exhaust plumes high in the atmosphere. The spreading gases grew substantially wider than the vehicle itself as it entered thinner, less dense air, shining brightly against the darker sky below and startling observers up to 800 miles away.
Falcon 9 launches the CRS-35 mission to the @Space_Station pic.twitter.com/QiHIqlDLTH
Eyewitnesses across multiple states documented the phenomenon. Ellen Alence photographed the ascent from a farm in Colbert, Georgia, while Richard Mack Wilson-Leigh watched the flight from Durham, North Carolina, noting that the staging separation and subsequent booster burn initially resembled a comet or an explosion. In Orlando, Florida, Natasha Cosme panicked after mistaking the glowing trail for a meteor before realizing a launch was underway.
Other observers across Florida cities including Titusville and Vero Beach, as well as locations in Tennessee, captured images of the glowing cloud. NASA’s Kennedy Space Center addressed the public inquiries on X, explaining the mechanics of the dawn-launch jellyfish effect where high-altitude exhaust catches the first rays of morning sunlight.
Many of you are talking about the “space jellyfish” following this morning’s launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.More than 6,300 scientific investigations and cargo are on their way to the @Space_Station, as part of SpaceX's 35th… pic.twitter.com/RyKTwBcd4P
Cargo Unloading and Microgravity Experiments Aboard the Orbital Outpost
Following an automated docking at 10:27 a.m. EDT on Thursday to the space-facing port on the Harmony module, the uncrewed Dragon spacecraft was unpacked by the Expedition 75 crew. NASA flight engineers Anil Menon, Jessica Watkins, Luke Delaney, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk transferred critical scientific samples into station freezers and research racks.
The cargo manifest includes equipment for manufacturing artificial retinas in microgravity, aiming to develop technologies that restore vision in individuals experiencing certain forms of vision loss. Other activated investigations involve growing 3D heart tissue models for advanced drug testing, examining how new glass types form in weightlessness, and cultivating brain organoids from human cells to study neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and multiple sclerosis.
Upcoming Spacewalks for Solar Array Installation
Stored inside Dragon’s unpressurized trunk are the final set of International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Arrays, known as IROSAs. Ground engineers will use the Canadarm2 robotic arm to remove these solar panels from the cargo vehicle and temporarily stow them on logistics platforms along the station’s truss structure.
NASA flight engineers Anil Menon and Joshua Kutryk are scheduled to finalize the installation and activation of these new power-boosting arrays during a pair of spacewalks slated for October 29 and November 5, 2026.
LIVE: Watch as a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft docks to the @Space_Station, delivering thousands of pounds of supplies and science experiments that could help treat diseases back on Earth. https://t.co/7ILVaU0k9P
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