I have absolutely no discoveries or launches to mention today, so I will quickly take the opportunity to mention that the Draconid meteor shower will be reaching peak activity tomorrow night. The Draconids are the first of October’s two main showers (the other being the Orionids in a couple of weeks).
The Draconids are the dust produced by Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner (they are also occasionally known as the Giacobinids) a periodic comet discovered in 1913, and visited by the International Cometary Explorer (ICE) spececraft in 1985.
What you can expect to see in terms of numbers of meteors (the zenithal hourly rate) is hard to say for the Draconids. They are wildly varied from year to year. a few years ago it reached up to 150 per hour, and 100 is not uncommon. Every so often there is even a “storm” (there were huge storms in 1933 and 1946, and more recently a fairly strong one in 2012). There are often rumours of another good Draconid year, but you can never be certain in the world of meteors.
It's All Going On Up There 