CRS-35 launched: final iROSA arrays en route to the ISS, "space jellyfish" across the East Coast, sonic booms on landing — with the NASA Administrator and a crewmate watching from orbit
From the Space digest for 2026-10-13
What happened: SpaceX's CRS-35 cargo mission launched successfully October 13 at 6:33 AM EDT from SLC-40 — NSF's broadcast post confirms the Falcon 9 flying the 35th cargo Dragon mission to the station (SpaceNews via Foust: "Falcon 9 launches 35th cargo Dragon mission to ISS"). The Cargo Dragon carries fresh food, science gear, equipment and crew supplies, including two roll-out solar arrays that complete the station's major power upgrade — the final iROSA arrays — flying to a station fresh off the Crew-12 handover. The pre-dawn ascent delivered the promised spectacle: the "space jellyfish" plume became visible across the eastern US roughly 3 minutes 20 seconds after launch as the rocket entered sunlight (NSF RT of John Kraus, 6:38 AM EDT), with sightings reported from Tybee Island, Georgia (expanded-exhaust-plume explainer), across Marion, Sumter and Lake counties in Florida (Orlando Sentinel wraps the sonic booms and the plume over Central Florida and beyond), in North Carolina skies, and in a photo round-up of the display up and down the East Coast. The booster landing added its own effect — sonic booms that locals treated as an alarm clock (NSF RT of Julia Bergeron, 6:59 AM EDT, which also captured the ISS passing just left of the re-entry burn), and the Chicago Tribune's wrap ties the sonic boom and jellyfish to the same launch. Official reaction followed: NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman (NSF RT, 5:43 PM ET October 13) — "Sometimes one extraordinary view is all it takes to remind us how incredible spaceflight is, and how much we still have to explore" — passed along astronaut Anil Menon's photos from the ground and from space capturing the launch, with Expedition 75 "eagerly awaiting" a Dragon carrying "important science … as well as critical hardware for extending the life of" the station.
What's genuinely new: The launch itself is now confirmed on the record rather than scheduled; the genuinely new layer on top of the previously recorded payload/tease detail is the flight outcome and the spectacle's geographic spread — Tybee Island, central Florida three-county visibility, North Carolina, the East Coast photo round-up — plus the sonic-boom landing effect, the ISS-passing capture, and the Isaacman/Menon/Expedition 75 reaction layer, which puts a named NASA source behind the event. This stays unclustered: no existing storyline thread in the memory covers routine Dragon resupply (the ISS logistics thread tracks Progress; the ISS-endgame thread covers deorbit and the successor race).
Watch: Berthing; confirmation of the final iROSA installation and the completed power-upgrade milestone in station planning.
Links: NSF broadcast · SpaceNews RT · Chicago Tribune · Orlando Sentinel · MSN — East Coast photos · NSF RT — Isaacman/Menon · PrimeTimer — Tybee Island · Ocala News · MSN — NC sightings · MSN — cargó Dragon payload · NSF RT — Bergeron sonic booms · NSF RT — Kraus jellyfish