Failed Russian spy satellite falls to Earth in brilliant fireball | NASA to launch secretive US military payloads on 3 sounding rockets from Virginia tonight | Russian cargo ship to make a novel day-long parking spot swap at space station
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A failed Russian spy satellite crashed back to Earth early this morning (Oct. 20), burning up in a brilliant fireball spotted by many observers in the American Midwest. The American Meteor Society (AMS) has so far received more than 80 reports about the fiery display, from people as far south as Tennessee and as far north as Michigan. The AMS has posted dramatic imagery captured by some of these observers, including a 27-second video from skywatcher Chris Johnson that shows the meteor blazing a trail through the skies above Fort Gratiot Township, Michigan.
NASA will launch three sounding rockets from coastal Virginia on flights that local observers may be able to spot in the sky. Details about the launches are scarce, as the rockets are carrying payloads from the U.S. Department of Defense. But the three rockets will take off from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wednesday (Oct. 20) between 5 and 11 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT to Oct. 21 at 0300 GMT).
An uncrewed Russian cargo ship will begin swapping parking spots at the International Space Station tonight (Oct. 20) in a move that will take just over a day to reach its new berth. The Progress 78 spacecraftis scheduled to undock from Russia's Poisk module at the station at 7:42 p.m. EDT (2342 GMT). There won't be any coverage of the undocking on NASA Television, but you can watch it redock at its new port at the International Space Station on Thursday.
The valve problem that has kept Boeing's Starliner astronaut taxi grounded for the past 10 weeks may soon be solved. Starliner was supposed to launch Aug. 3 on Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2), a crucial uncrewed demonstration mission to the International Space Station for NASA. But standard checkouts just a few hours before liftoff revealed that 13 of the 24 oxidizer valves in the propulsion system in Starliner's service module were stuck, nixing that plan.
The Hunter's Moon rises tonight, marking the first full moon of the fall season in the Northern Hemisphere. October's full moon will reach its peak at 10:57 a.m. EDT (1457 GMT) today (Oct. 20), though the moon will have appeared full since Monday night, and will remain big and bright in the night sky through Thursday. The full moon will be visible during night hours to the casual skywatcher, weather permitting.
The annual Orionid meteor shower will reach its peak today (Oct. 20), but could have some competition with the full Hunter's Moon set to rise tonight, too. The Orionid meteor shower — the second meteor shower of October, following the Draconid meteor shower on Oct. 8 — is expected to peak in the early morning, coinciding with the full moon, which will officially be full at 10:57 a.m. EDT (1457 GMT) today.
NASA's next space station launch is set for Halloween and will put four more astronauts into space on a SpaceX rocket. The Crew-3 launch is scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 31 at 2:21 a.m. EDT (0721 GMT), using a Falcon 9 rocket. The launch will take place at Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The United States Senate's largest committee wants NASA to choose a second company to build its new moon lander. In April of this year, NASA announced that SpaceX alone had won the contract to build the agency's next moon lander for its Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the moon's surface by 2024. After much legal back-and-forth following NASA's original decision, the Senate Appropriations Committee is directing NASA to now choose a second company to develop a crewed lunar lander, according to SpaceNews. However, this direction came with only a small funding increase.
NASA has picked a new telescope to head into space, where it will peer out in search of the most powerful light emissions made in the universe. After several decades of scientific planning and several tiers of NASA concept reviews, the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) telescope is finally making its way to space. The $145 million mission is slated to launch sometime in 2025, according to the space agency's announcement on Monday (Oct. 18).
