Follow-Up: SpaceX Falcon 9 Morning Launch Brings Another "Space Jellyfish": 32 Payloads to Orbit as Booster Flies for the 19th Time
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off on the morning of October 20 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, once again producing a "space jellyfish" in the sky as its exhaust plume caught the sunlight before sunrise. The launch, on SpaceX's Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission, carried 32 payloads into orbit.
The first-stage booster flew for the 19th time and landed successfully on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas in the Atlantic about nine minutes after liftoff. It was the 60th orbital launch of 2026 from Florida's Space Coast.
Observers along the coast photographed the luminous, expanding plume — the second such jellyfish display in a week — as the rocket climbed through the upper atmosphere. The Bandwagon rideshare program carries small satellites for multiple customers on a single rocket; the 32 payloads on this flight included cubesats and microsats from a variety of space-industry companies and organizations.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：卡纳维拉尔角猎鹰9号发射（美国太空军官方照片，公共领域）。图片来源：Wikimedia Commons / Photo: A Falcon 9 launch at Cape Canaveral (U.S. Space Force photo, public domain). Source: Wikimedia Commons
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- 2026-10-21Follow-Up: SpaceX Falcon 9 Morning Launch Brings Another "Space Jellyfish": 32 Payloads to Orbit as Booster Flies for the 19th TimeThis story
