The SpaceX ‘Space Jellyfish’ of October 13, 2026: What You Saw and When the Next One Is

What happened at 6:33 a.m. on October 13, 2026

The launch was SpaceX’s Falcon 9 carrying a Dragon spacecraft on the CRS-35 commercial resupply mission for NASA, flying from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Liftoff was at 10:33:44 UTC, which is 6:33:44 a.m. EDT — roughly 45 minutes before sunrise on the Space Coast. Dragon carried more than 6,300 pounds of science experiments and crew supplies to the International Space Station, with docking scheduled for Thursday, October 15.

For the first two minutes it looked like any pre-dawn launch: an orange point of light rising from the Cape with a short tail of flame, visible far up the coast. Then, as the first stage separated and the second stage kept climbing toward the northeast, the exhaust began to balloon in the thin air and caught direct sunlight that had not yet reached the ground. Viewer photos show a huge, softly glowing bell or umbrella of light with wispy, tentacle-like streamers hanging below it — the ‘jellyfish’. Plumes like this typically shift from white through blue to pink as the Sun angle changes and the sky brightens.

The cloud outlasted the rocket. The second stage itself was gone from view within a few minutes, but the lit plume kept expanding and drifting, and viewer photos submitted to local stations show it still hanging in the sky as the morning brightened around it. By the time most people had their phones out, the rocket was far over the Atlantic and what they were photographing was the cloud it left behind.

Where it was seen, and which way people were looking

Based on local news photo galleries and viewer submissions, the jellyfish was reported across Central and Northeast Florida — Orlando, St. Augustine, Palatka, Orange Park, Jacksonville and Jacksonville Beach — through Southeast Georgia and the South Carolina Lowcountry around Summerville and Charleston, with further reports from North Carolina and Virginia. Coverage ran on News4JAX, WCIV ABC News 4 in Charleston, CBS12 in West Palm Beach, WCTV in Tallahassee, WKMG/ClickOrlando and Weather.com. These are sightings as reported by local media, not measurements we made.

The direction depended on where you stood relative to the pad, which sits on Florida’s east coast near 28.6° N. Roughly: from Jacksonville, Southeast Georgia and the Carolinas the Cape is to the south, so the plume appeared low in the southern to southeastern sky and climbed as the rocket tracked northeast up the coast. From Orlando and the inland center of the state the pad is almost due east, so the show was east to east-northeast. From West Palm Beach and Miami the Cape is to the north, so viewers looked north to north-northeast. From Tallahassee and the Panhandle the pad is far to the east-southeast and the glow sat low on that horizon.

Those bearings are approximate. The plume was roughly 80 to 100 miles up and drifting over the Atlantic, so it did not sit over any one town, and how high it stood above your horizon shrank with distance — well up in the sky from Northeast Florida, closer to the horizon from the Carolinas and Virginia. The finder on this page gives the direction and elevation our model estimates for your exact location on the next launch; it will not match a view from 200 miles away.

Why it glowed: the twilight geometry, by the numbers

At liftoff the Sun was about 11.4° below the horizon at the pad, by our model — well inside the −6° to −17° band where the ground is in darkness but a rocket climbing past roughly 60 miles pops out of Earth’s shadow into direct sunlight. Before the launch our model computed a lit window of about T+3 to T+5 minutes for CRS-35 and graded it ‘high’. That window matches what viewers described: the glow appeared a few minutes after liftoff, not the moment the rocket cleared the pad.

It looked like a cloud rather than a flame because of pressure. Near the ground the surrounding air squeezes the exhaust into a narrow column. Above about 60 miles there is almost no air left, so the exhaust — mostly water vapor and carbon dioxide from engines burning kerosene and liquid oxygen — expands freely into a translucent cloud tens of miles across. Sunlight scattering off that cloud is what you saw. In daylight the same cloud is nearly invisible against a bright sky; in full darkness it is unlit and invisible.

CRS-35 had the ideal orientation on top of the ideal time. It was a dawn launch flying east-northeast, toward the sunrise, so every minute of flight carried the plume further into the lit part of the sky rather than away from it. That is why a dawn Cape launch on a station-bound track scores so well in our grading, and why a dusk launch at the same Sun angle, flying away from the Sun, often does not.

Why some people saw nothing

The most common reason is cloud. Any overcast between you and the plume hides it completely, and a low cloud deck can block a glow that is only 10 or 15 degrees above the horizon even when the sky overhead looks clear. Trees, buildings and coastal haze do the same thing at low elevations, which is why beaches, bridges and parking decks tend to produce the photos and backyards tend to produce disappointment.

Timing cut the other way. The rocket was a dim moving point for its first two minutes and the glow peaked around T+3 to T+5 minutes, so anyone who looked at 6:33, saw nothing dramatic and went back inside missed it — and anyone who heard about it at 6:50 was mostly too late. Finally, geography: the plume was over the Atlantic east of Florida. The farther west and north you were, the lower it sat on your horizon, until it dropped below it altogether. From well inland the plume may have been lit but simply hidden behind the curve of the Earth, which is one reason reports cluster along the coast.

The next chance: Bandwagon-5, Monday, October 19

As of October 14, the next launch with the same setup is SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission from the same pad, Space Launch Complex 40, targeting Monday, October 19, 2026 at 10:30 UTC — 6:30 a.m. EDT. Our model grades it ‘high’: the Sun would be about 12.9° below the horizon at the pad at liftoff, with a lit window around T+4 to T+5 minutes on the dawn side. On paper it is the same geometry that produced the October 13 jellyfish.

Two honest caveats. First, launch dates slip constantly — weather, range conflicts and hardware checks all move them — and a slip of even an hour could move Bandwagon-5 out of the twilight window entirely, so check the launch page the evening before and again when you wake up. Second, a ‘high’ grade means the plume should be sunlit, not that it will be bright, and not that your sky will be clear. The grade is a model estimate; brightness depends on the engine, its throttle profile and upper-atmosphere conditions we cannot see in advance.

To hear about it in advance: enter your location in the finder on this page and we will email you the day before any launch rated visible from where you are, free. Pro members get a text when a twilight launch is graded high — the time, the direction to face and the minute the glow should appear. The live hub linked above (‘every upcoming launch graded for jellyfish’) lists every scheduled launch with its current grade and updates as dates move.

How to see and photograph the next one

Be outside and facing the right direction two minutes before liftoff — for Bandwagon-5 that means 6:28 a.m. EDT if the date holds. Use the finder for your bearing; from most of Northeast Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas that is roughly south to southeast, from Orlando east-northeast, from South Florida north to north-northeast. Pick a spot with a low, open horizon in that direction: a beach, a bridge, a parking deck, a field. Give your eyes a few minutes to adapt and keep your phone screen dim.

The rocket appears first as a moving orange star. Do not leave when it fades — the jellyfish comes after it, at roughly T+3 to T+5 minutes, and keeps developing for several minutes beyond that. On a phone, switch to night mode or a two-to-three-second exposure, brace the phone on something solid, and turn off the flash. Include a tree line or building in the frame for scale; the glowing cloud can span many times the width of the full Moon, and a wide shot shows it better than zoom. With a real camera, a tripod and a few seconds at moderate ISO will capture the color shifts your eyes only half see.

Sources and further reading

• News4JAX: SpaceX launch creates jellyfish-shaped cloud over Northeast Florida, Southeast Georgia
• Weather.com: the Falcon 9 ‘space jellyfish’ rocket plume over Florida
• WCIV ABC News 4: Falcon 9 launch lights up the Lowcountry sky (photo gallery)
• NASA: SpaceX Dragon lifts off for Thursday cargo delivery (CRS-35)
• LookToSpace: how the jellyfish grade is estimated