Russia confirms rocket launch behind viral sky “jellyfish”

Social media users shared widespread footage Thursday evening of a glowing, tentacled shape in the night sky, with some posts claiming it showed a missile launched toward Ukraine. Within hours, astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell offered a more mundane explanation, and Russia’s Ministry of Defense confirmed it the next day.

“Russia appears to have launched a Soyuz from Plesetsk at around 1650 UTC Sep 17, probably with another Glonass navigation satellite, but no official confirmation yet,” McDowell wrote on X on Thursday.

By Friday, Sept. 18, Russia’s Ministry of Defense released video of the launch, identifying the rocket as a Soyuz-2.1b lifting off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome carrying a satellite for the ministry’s own use. The ministry did not name the satellite or describe its mission, following its usual practice of keeping military payload details classified.

The glowing shape that alarmed observers is a well-documented optical effect known as a “space jellyfish.” It happens when a rocket climbs high enough into the atmosphere to catch direct sunlight during evening or morning twilight, while observers on the ground remain in darkness. The rocket’s exhaust plume expands rapidly in the thin upper atmosphere, and the illuminated, billowing gas cloud can resemble a glowing jellyfish trailing tentacles across the sky. The same phenomenon has accompanied SpaceX Falcon 9 launches over Florida and California this year, as well as previous Soyuz launches from Russian and Kazakh spaceports.

Plesetsk, located in Russia’s Arkhangelsk region roughly 800 km (500 miles) north of Moscow, is the country’s primary military launch site and has hosted a steady stream of Soyuz-2.1b missions carrying Defense Ministry satellites throughout 2026, including launches in February and April. Those earlier missions were also witnessed and photographed across Finland and Scandinavia, consistent with the rocket’s typical flight path toward high-inclination orbits to the north. That trajectory runs opposite the direction claims about a strike on Ukraine would require, since Ukraine lies south of Plesetsk rather than along the rocket’s ascent path.

McDowell’s guess that the payload was another Glonass navigation satellite has not been confirmed by Russian officials, who described the cargo only in general terms as serving the Ministry of Defense’s interests. Russia has not disclosed the satellite’s orbit, designation, or intended function.