Image (Credit): Suspected space junk discovered in Minnesota on October 14, 2026. (Stevens County Minnesota Sheriff’s Office)
US farmers have it tough enough these days without the added fear of space junk falling on their heads, yet that is what appears to be the case in a Minnesota cornfield. The farmer bumped into the debris, about 11 feet in diameter, while harvesting his crop.
So where did it come from? One astrophysicist believes it is the upper stage of a Zhuque-2E rocket launched from China in last month. These rockets belong to a Chinese commercial space company called LandSpace, which successfully launched 10 satellites into orbit on September 15th.
What is surprising is that this doesn’t happen more often given the increased number of launches around the world as well as the debris tossed over the side of the International Space Station (ISS). The New York Times reported this summer that in 2025 the US Space Force issued alerts related to about 820 pieces of debris falling to Earth. Fortunately, most of it burns up during reentry or hits the ocean.
Should you be a worried farmer, or just someone interested in what is coming down in the near future, you can visit the Satellite Re-entry Tracker. The image below shows the rocket bodies currently in orbit being tracked by the site.
Image (Credit): Rocket bodies being tracked by the Satellite Re-entry Tracker as of October 21, 2026. (Satellite Re-entry Tracker)
Image (Credit): Space shuttle Endeavour being carried by NASA’s Shuttle Carrier Aircraft as it arrives at the Los Angeles International Airport in California, on Friday, September21, 2012. (collectSPACE/Robert Z. Pearlman)
On this day in 2012, NASA’s Space Shuttle Endeavour arrived at the California Space Center after a 12-mile journey from the Los Angeles International Airport. Officially called the Space Transportation System (STS), the Endeavor was one of four fully-capable space shuttles operated by NASA (Space Shuttle Enterprise, the fifth space shuttle, was a prototype).
The first space shuttle to be delivered to NASA was the Columbia, delivered in 1979. Space Shuttle Endeavor was the last space shuttle to be delivered, arriving at NASA in 1991.
The space shuttles were the first orbital spacecraft designed for reuse. All of the shuttles had important mission from launching and maintaining satellites to transporting astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station.
Here are a few more facts about Space Shuttle Endeavour:
Number of space missions: 25 from May 1992 to May 2011
Total miles traveled: 122,883,151
Total Time in space: 299 days
Key Mission: Repairing the Hubble Space Telescope in December 1993
Image (Credit): Space Shuttle Endeavour’s final mission patch. (California Science Center)
NASA and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than Tuesday, Oct. 13 to launch scientific investigations, supplies, and equipment to the International Space Station. Loaded with more than 6,300 pounds of supplies, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft will lift off aboard the company’s Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Following its arrival to the orbital complex, Dragon will autonomously dock to the space-facing port of the space station’s Harmony module.
Scientists at NASA Glenn in Cleveland are rushing to meet a two-year deadline for launching a small nuclear reactor to power the next Mars mission — the first time the U.S. has launched a nuclear reactor into space in 60 years. The mission to send three mini-helicopters to Mars will use a new nuclear electric propulsion system. NASA Glenn is designing both the reactor and the propulsion system. NASA Glenn nuclear engineer Lindsay Kaldon feels confident both will be ready in time for a federally imposed deadline of 2028. “It’s accomplishable — if that’s a word,” Kaldon said. “It’s something we can do.”
Astronomers have discovered an unusual star system about 300 light-years from Earth where a small star is gradually consuming a nearby brown dwarf. Instead of swallowing its companion in one dramatic event, the star is steadily pulling material from it, creating a cosmic feeding process that could continue for billions of years…The system, designated ZTF J0440+2325, lies within our Milky Way galaxy approximately 300 light-years away. It is the first observed example of a low-mass star steadily drawing material from another low-mass object.
Image (Credit): The SpaceX Dragon, with its nose cone open and carrying four Crew-13 members, approaches the International Space Station for a docking yesterday evening. (NASA)
A new ISS crew was launched from Cape Canaveral at 11:10 a.m. EDT Thursday, October 1, 2026 . Crew-13, consisting of NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. The ride to the space station was scheduled to be about 8 hours. The SpaceX Dragon capsule carrying the crew safely docked with the ISS at 9:19 p.m. EDT.
The new crew will replace Crew‑12 consisting of NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. These four crew members will be returning to Earth as soon as Monday, weather permitting.
Image (Credit): From left to right, Crew-13 NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, CSA astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. (NASA)
The European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) skimmed the very outer edge of Earth’s atmosphere on 28 September, using the gravity of our home planet to alter its route to Jupiter using very little fuel. The flyby deflected Juice by an angle of 20° compared to its pre-flyby path and increased its velocity by 3.5 km/s. In the four weeks before the flyby, spacecraft operators only had to give Juice one tiny nudge (out of six opportunities set aside) to put it on exactly the right approach trajectory to make the most of Earth’s gravity. They have been tracking the spacecraft extra carefully since 17 August, and will continue to do so until 10 October.
SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket blasted off from Texas Monday morning on its most ambitious test flight yet, aiming for a roughly 10-hour mission that would have sent the spacecraft around Earth six times, though the company ultimately decided to end the flight earlier than planned…The launch marks Starship’s 14th test flight and its first attempt to reach orbit, a major step beyond previous suborbital missions that ended with splashdowns about an hour after liftoff.
NASA is working with Boeing to launch an unpiloted Starliner capsule in the December-to-January time frame to test upgrades and improvements ordered in the wake of a 2024 mission that suffered multiple propulsion system failures, stranding two astronauts on the space station for more than nine months. If the unpiloted test flight goes well, NASA and Boeing hope to launch a piloted Starliner flight in the mid-2028 time frame, officials said Monday, incorporating redesigned propulsion system valves, more robust subsystems and other modifications expected to prevent the sort of failures that occurred in 2024. Veteran astronaut Warren “Woody” Hoburg will command the mission.
It’s a question that has perplexed planetary astronomers for decades: Why does Venus — so similar in size to Earth and not all that far from Earth’s orbit — have no moon, while our planet has such a relatively large one? Earth’s Moon likely formed after a massive collision early in solar system history. But according to calculations, Venus should have been even more likely than Earth to have experienced such a catastrophic crash during its formative years. Yet today it has no moon at all. Now, a series of simulations published in the September 20th Astrophysical Journal, have demonstrated that Venus might once have had a moon — but the planet’s relative proximity to the Sun and its massive atmosphere both created conditions under which no moon could have survived. If there ever was a moon, it would have disintegrated and fallen back to the surface long ago.
