Right now, #BepiColombo is just 165 km from Mercury's surface. This is the closest the spacecraft has ever been, and the closest it will ever get. Having just passed the planet's north pole, the spacecraft will soon capture its first-ever images of the south pole. Stay tuned!

Launch: A Long March 6 rocket lifted off from Taiyuan 1830 UTC today, carrying a new set of 10 satellites into orbit for automaker Geely's connectivity and navigation constellation. mp.weixin.qq.com/s/ivohxu8EGkge…

LAUNCH at 1533 UTC Sep 5 of Falcon 9 with the Starlink Group 8-11 satellites from Canaveral. LAUNCH at 1830 UTC Sep 5 of Chang Zheng 6 with ten Geely Group 3 autonomous-driving-support satellites from Taiyuan

The Chinese spaceplane has completed its third flight. Chinese media reported (at 0144 UTC) landing of the plane on Sep 6 (Beijing time). My calculations show the orbit ground track of 2023-195A passed over the usual Lop Nor landing site at 0110 UTC Sep 6 (about an hour ago).

LAUNCH at 0320 UTC Sep 6 of the third set of NRO Starshield satellites aboard a Falcon 9 from Vandenberg, heading to a 70 degree inclination orbit.

Expecting the payloads to get the cover names USA 400 to USA 420 (2024-160A to 160W)

Good progress today on the Transporter 11 identifications with a bunch from S4S_SDA -combining these with those from Planet and @Hamsatnl and @Celestrak we now have: 112 payloads believed deployed, 88 cataloged tracked objects, 57 with at least tentative identifications (51%).

Starliner undocked from ISS at 2204 UTC Sep 6

Have NASA reported how much downmass cargo is on Starliner?

Starliner is outside the 'keep out sphere' around ISS with no problems so far. It was able to do this using the forward thrusters rather than any of the ones that misbehaved earlier in the year. Deorbit burn in about 5 hours.

Per NASA PAO, Starliner deorbit burn is a 59s burn starting at 0317:13 UTC Sep 7, with a delta-V of 129.9 m/s; it will occur at a range of 90 km from ISS

The NOTAM areas that I've seen allegedly for Starliner reentry don't seem to match the expected ground track at all. Anyone have better data for the SM disposal location?

Thanks to Dillon for the correct NOTAM, here is the service module reentry area compared to the ground track

Starliner deorbit burn now underway

Starliner deorbit burn complete, apparently successfully

Service module has been jettisoned. CM on track for entry in 15 min from now. Both still over 400 km in altitude right now.

I estimate Starliner orbit is now about -20 x 418 km

All three parachutes deployed from Starliner

Starliner touchdown at White Sands Missile Range at 0401:35 UTC Sep 7

Congrats to the Boeing and NASA teams for getting Starliner safely to the ground. (Accurate landing coordinates would of course be too much to hope for?)