Glowing 'Space Jellyfish' Drifts Over Eastern Seaboard; Rocket Exhaust Blamed

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. — A vast, glowing formation resembling a translucent jellyfish spread across the predawn sky on Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, according to Unknown Country, drawing the attention of observers across parts of the southeastern and Mid-Atlantic United States.

The publication, citing The Washington Post, reports that the apparition followed the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Per NASA, the rocket lifted off at 6:33 a.m. Eastern with a Dragon cargo spacecraft bound for the International Space Station.

The mission, designated CRS-35, is described as SpaceX's 35th commercial resupply flight for NASA. Its manifest reportedly includes more than 6,300 pounds of experiments, equipment and supplies, among them the final pair of solar arrays meant to expand the station's electrical capacity.

The jellyfish, however, was the work of the exhaust rather than the cargo. According to the article, gases and water vapor from the engines expanded into thin air at great height, where sunlight could strike the plume from below the observer's horizon even as the ground lay in twilight. The Post is said to have described the effect as a rocket-generated noctilucent cloud.

Unknown Country uses the episode as a lesson in sky-watching. To a person unfamiliar with launches, it notes, such a changing, expanding light might easily pass for an unidentified aerial phenomenon. Launch schedules, trajectories, sunlight angles and time-stamped photographs can help establish an ordinary origin, the article says.

The writer concludes that the explanation takes nothing from the wonder of the sight, and advises skywatchers to establish when and where a light appeared before deciding what it might be.