THE CME MIGHT HAVE MISSED: A CME expected to hit Earth on April 27th has not yet arrived. It might have missed. NOAA forecasters say there is a still a chance of G1-class storms on April 28th if the CME arrives late. Aurora alerts: SMS Text.
SPACEX METEOR SHOWER--WITH FRAGMENTS ON THE GROUND: On April 27th, a shower of incandescent debris entered Earth's atmosphere over the western USA. Mike Lewinski photographed the light show from Crestone, Colorado:
"It was so bright, it illuminated the foreground for one of my cameras facing in the opposite direction," says Lewinski. Other observers estimated the glow of the fragments to be around magnitude -5, brighter than the planet Venus.
This was no natural meteor shower. It is debris from a SpaceX mission. On March 12, 2023, a SpaceX Dragon crew capsule named 'Endurance' returned 4 ISS astronauts to Earth. Just before the Endurance plunged into Earth's atmosphere, it jettisoned it's 'trunk'--a disposable unpressurized container for the ship’s solar arrays. The trunk remained in orbit for another month and a half before falling back into the atmosphere and burning up.
UPDATE: According to NASA, the reentry was detected by NEXRAD radar with a cluster of strong radar signatures southeast of the city of Limon, Colorado. Large fragments of the trunk may have landed near this site. This map shows where the debris might be located:
Debris from ISS servicing missions can remain in orbit for years. The relatively rapid decay of Endurance's truck is a sign that Solar Cycle 25 is intensifying. Solar activity heats the upper atmosphere, causing it to puff up and pull objects down more quickly than before. Indeed, a severe geomagnetic storm on April 23-24 almost certainly accelerated the decay. More 'SpaceX meteor showers' are in the offing as Solar Max approaches.
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SILVER SNOOPY SPACE PENDANT: Snoopy has touched space. This sterling silver pendant flew to the stratosphere on April 15, 2023, floating on a cosmic ray balloon 117,400 feet above the Sierra Nevada mountains of central California:
You can have it for $159.95. Space Snoopy makes a great birthday, anniversary or Mother's day gift. The students of Earth to Sky Calculus are selling space pendants to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the pendant in flight and telling the story of its journey to the stratosphere and back again
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
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