October 2020 – Page 2 – Spaceflight Now

SpaceX executive pitches Starship for space debris cleanup

October 27, 2020 Stephen Clark

SpaceX could use its Starship vehicles to clear out space debris in Earth orbit, alongside the program’s more publicized purpose of ferrying people and cargo to the moon and Mars, a company executive said.

Atlas 5 launch from Cape Canaveral scheduled for next week

October 27, 2020 Stephen Clark

United Launch Alliance teams mounted a top secret payload for the National Reconnaissance Office on top of an Atlas 5 rocket Monday at Cape Canaveral in preparation for a liftoff scheduled just after sunset Nov. 3.

China launches three military spy satellites

October 26, 2020 Stephen Clark

Three mysterious payloads widely believed to be signals intelligence satellites for the Chinese military rocketed into orbit on top of a Long March 2C booster Monday from a launch base in southwestern China.

Russia launches Glonass navigation satellite

October 26, 2020 Stephen Clark

A Soyuz booster and Fregat upper stage successfully delivered an upgraded Russian Glonass navigation satellite to an orbit nearly 12,000 miles above Earth on Saturday.

Water molecules detected on moon’s sunlit surface, adding impetus to Artemis

October 26, 2020 William Harwood

Water molecules have been directly detected across sunlit regions of the moon, not just in ultra-cold, permanently shadowed polar craters, scientists announced Monday, indicating the precious resource may be more easily accessible to future astronauts than previously thought.

SpaceX adds another 60 satellites to Starlink network

October 24, 2020 Stephen Clark

SpaceX successfully deployed 60 more Starlink internet satellites in orbit Saturday, continuing a record launch cadence while engineers assess a concern with Falcon 9 rocket engines that has delayed other missions, including the next crew flight to the International Space Station.

Falcon 9 flies away from pad 40 with more Starlink satellites (members only)

October 24, 2020 Stephen Clark

A 229-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 11:31 a.m. EDT (1531 GMT) Saturday, Oct. 24, with 60 more Starlink satellites for SpaceX’s growing network to beam internet signals from orbit.

OSIRIS-REx overflows with asteroid samples after bagging bounty from Bennu

October 23, 2020 Stephen Clark

The sampling mechanism on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is stuffed with specimens captured from asteroid Bennu earlier this week — so full that some of the rocks are floating out into space. Officials said Friday they will stow the samples inside the mission’s Earth return capsule sooner than planned to minimize the loss of asteroid material.

Soyuz brings three space station fliers back to Earth

October 22, 2020 William Harwood

One week after two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut arrived at the International Space Station, the three crew members they’re replacing strapped into their own Soyuz spacecraft, undocked and returned to Earth Wednesday with a landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan to close out a 196-day mission.

Scientists thrilled with first look at asteroid sampler in action

October 21, 2020 Stephen Clark

The first images beamed back to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft after it briefly landed an asteroid buoyed expectations Wednesday that the probe collected enough samples to meet the mission’s minimum requirement for return to Earth.