That’s a snap shot, you need to see the animated version, that sucker was blowing south and from an observers point of view the viewing angle is going to change drastically over time. The NASA guys nailed it...
There was no missile, nor rocket.
It was an aircraft.
At first glance yes, people were fooled, but once combining ALL the informtion available....
http://spacefellowship.com/news/art23876/it-s-a-bird-it-s-a-missile-it-s-an-airplane-.html
“It appeared to be between two high clouds, one in foreground and one in the background,” he said. “I would have expected that it was at the same level or above the high clouds, so it should have been obscured more by the cloud in the background. Thus, I concluded again that it was a missile.”
He took another look, this time with the help of Doug Spangenberg, who works at Langley as part of the Science Systems and Applications Inc. (SSAI) contract. Spangenberg had sequenced imagery from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite 11 (GOES-11) that showed a persistent contrail that could match the “mystery” contrail.
Minnis then consulted a contrail “forecaster” put together by SSAI’s David Duda and Rabindra Palikonda, who also work at Langley, and learned that conditions were “ripe” for persistent contrails over the Pacific west of Los Angeles, but that contrails would only survive for a short time closer to the coast.
“As it turns out, the high clouds seen in the background of the video were actually behind the contrail because the plane had flown north of the clouds,” Minnis said, “and changed course to the northeast, so that the clouds were behind the contrail as viewed from Catalina Island. All of that information changed my mind.”
Minnis said that while he can’t prove the contrail came from an airplane, it is the “most likely” scenario based on his research.
“Later, while viewing some blogs, I found that the contrail corresponded remarkably well with flight AWE808, which flew from Hawaii to Phoenix; it showed the change in course to the northeast at the same location, further confirming my conclusion.”
'What size contrail can be seen in a satellite image?'
Contact details for Dr Minnis if you need to query his assessment