USS Cobia – Its history and future
An evening pause: Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
Author: Robert Zimmerman
May 8, 2026 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Stoke Space shows off the interior of its Nova rocket’s first stage tank
The company is “putting the finishing touches on our integration campaign,” which suggests it is getting very close to that first launch. No date has been set however.
- On this date in 1992 the space shuttle Endeavour launched on its first mission.
The mission captured and repaired the Intelsat-6 F3 communications satellite, in one of the most daring captures of the entire shuttle program. The original plan to catch didn’t work, so the crew ended up sending three astronauts out in the cargo bay to grab and hold it while one got it attached.
- On May 8, 2004 the European Space Agency (ESA) did the first helicopter drop glide test of Phoenix, a prototype of a proposed orbital and reusable launch vehicle
Dropped from 8,000 ft by a helicopter, it landed precisely and without incident after a GPS-guided 90 second glide. More than two decades later, ESA has done nothing to follow up this test flight.
Rover startup Lunar Outpost raises $30 million in investment capital
The lunar rover startup Lunar Outpost revealed yesterday that it has raised $30 million in private investment capital in its latest funding round.
Lunar Outpost, the leader in off-planet mobility and in-space infrastructure, today announced a $30M Series B led by Industrious Ventures, with participation from Type One Ventures, Eniac Ventures, Promus Ventures, Reliable Equity, and others. The capital injection accelerates production and deployment of the company’s advanced robotics and mobility platforms as it scales the critical industrial layer required for a permanent human presence in space.
The company started out competing for NASA’s initial planned contract to build a manned lunar rover, proposing its “Eagle” rover and even signing a contract with SpaceX to deliver it to the Moon on Starship. Since then it has developed and successfully tested an autonomous excavator, dubbed Owl, while expanding its product line beyond rovers.
Rocket Lab gets big launch contract for both its Electron and new Neutron rocket
Artist’s rendering of Neutron’s first stage fairings opening
to deploy the payload with the second stage engine.
Rocket Lab announced yesterday that it has won a big new launch contract with an undisclosed customer for three launches of its Electron rocket and five launches of its new Neutron rocket.
The multi-launch agreement includes five dedicated Neutron launches and three dedicated Electron launches baselined to launch between 2026 and 2029. The missions will lift-off from both Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand and Rocket Lab Launch Complex 3 in Virginia. Pricing for these launches aligns with Rocket Lab’s average selling price for Neutron and Electron. The remaining terms of the deal are undisclosed.
Based on the known average launch prices for these rockets, this deal is likely worth somewhere between $250 million to $300 million. That a customer was willing to purchase five launches of Neutron before the rocket has even launched is also a strong statement of confidence in Rocket Lab itself. The company hopes to do the first test launch of Neutron before the end of this year.
Rocket Lab also made a slew of other announcements yesterday. The company will be partnering with Anduril as part of its 20-launch contract with the War department to use its suborbital HASTE version of its Electron first stage for hypersonic testing. The deal involves three of those twenty launches.
The company also announced a partnership with Raytheon to “demonstrate advanced capabilities for the United States Space Force’s Space Based Interceptor program.” Rocket Lab also revealed it is acquiring the California robotic company Motiv Space Systems that has built equipment used on the Mars rover Perseverance.
Rocket Lab might not be as big as SpaceX, but it has unquestionably been as successful in its own way.
Louisiana state senator: Two unnamed aerospace companies are bidding for major land purchase
In response to the story earlier this week that SpaceX might be acquiring a 200-plus square mile patch of land near Pecan Island on the southern coast of Louisiana, a state senator has now confirmed that two unnamed aerospace companies have been talking with landowners about a possible purchase.
State Sen. Bob Hensgens, R-Abbeville, said he knows of two companies — he did not reveal if it is Elon Musk-owned SpaceX or Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin — that have reached out to landowners in coastal Vermilion and Cameron parishes about a possible acquisition. “I know both companies are trying to find property in southwest Louisiana,” Hensgens said. “I know from people in the parishes that the companies have made outreach in the area.”
If so, we might actually have a bidding war for this property. Note however that nothing has yet been confirmed, including the names of the companies involved. The article at the link however provides some background into the 136K acre plot owned by Exxon, and how it might now be for sale. It also reports that a number of legislators (not Hensgens) have signed non-disclosure agreements about the negotiations.
Testing new high speed rotors for the next generation of Mars helicopters
Ingenuity with its missing blade, at its final resting place on Mars.
Click for original image.
Engineers from JPL and the aerospace company AeroVironment have been testing a new set of high speed rotors that they hope to use on the next generation Mars helicopters, designed to increase their payload capacity by as much as 30%.
The rotors of Ingenuity — the first helicopter to fly on Mars — never spun faster than 2,700 rpm, because at faster speeds it would be approaching the speed of sound (on Mars), when unpredictable things could happen. Engineers are pushing those limits with these new rotors, in a chamber mimicking the thin Martian atmosphere.
The test engineers had taken the precaution of lining part of the chamber with sheet metal in case the blades broke apart during the supersonic experiment. From a control room a few yards away from the chamber, the team watched displays showing data and a view inside the chamber as the rpm climbed as high as 3,750. At that rate, the tips were traveling at Mach 0.98 [just under the Martian speed of sound]. Then the engineers activated a fan inside the chamber that pelted the rotors with headwinds. After each run, they increased in wind velocity for the next run.
The team pushed rotor tip speeds to Mach 1.08, boosting the Mars vehicle’s lift capability by 30%. This breakthrough allows future missions to support heavier scientific payloads, including advanced sensors and larger batteries for extended flight. Next the team tried their luck with the two-bladed SkyFall rotor. Because it is slightly longer than the three-bladed version, only 3,570 rpm was needed to achieve the same near-supersonic speed at the rotor tips prior to introducing the headwinds.
NASA administrator Jared Isaacman has said he wants to send a fleet of helicopters to Mars in 2028, on that first nuclear-powered mission. Whether or not that mission happens as he proposed, there is ample evidence scientists plan on sending more helicopters there in the next few years (see here, here, here). These tests lay the groundwork for those future missions.
Paraguay becomes the 67th nation to sign Artemis Accords
Paraguay yesterday became the 67th nation to sign Artemis Accords, continued the flood of smaller third world nations that have signed up in the last few weeks following the completion of the Artemis-2 mission around the Moon.
The remarks of NASA administration Jared Isaacman in connection with this event I find most tantalizing:
“They join an ever-growing coalition of like-minded nations committed to the peaceful, transparent, and responsible exploration of space. Established by President Trump in his first term, the Artemis Accords provided the principles for how we explore the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Now, with his national space policy, we are putting the Artemis Accords into practice with our Moon Base. We are creating opportunities for all Artemis Accords signatories, including Paraguay, to join us on the lunar surface and advance our shared objectives in this next era of exploration.” [emphasis mine]
While that national space policy [pdf] accepts the Outer Space Treaty’s limitation on establishing American law on other worlds, including property rights, it also makes its first goal that of promoting private enterprise.
» Read more
Chris Isaak – Wicked Game
An evening pause: Performed live 2012.
Hat tip Rex Ridenoure.
May 7, 2026 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- The manufacturer of the highly coveted Questar amateur telescope has shut down after 76 years
It had stopped making new telescopes in 2024, focusing on servicing those already purchased. Now it is shutting down entirely.
- Musk: xAI to be dissolved as a separate company
It will become a division of SpaceX, dubbed SpaceXAI.
- Tianzhou-9 cargo capsule undocked from China’s Tiangong-3 station yesterday
It burned up over the Pacific shortly thereafter. This frees the docking port for the next Tianzhou freighter, to be launched shortly.
- Alan Shepard’s suborbital Mercury flight was 65 years ago yesterday.
As Shepard said just before launch, “”Just fix your little problem and light this candle.”
- On May 7, 1975 geostationary communications ANIK-A3 (Telesat-3) was launched for Telesat Canada
Built by the Hughes Aircraft Company, it provided television, voice, and data transmission for Canada and elsewhere from 1972 through 2013.
Juno flies past the Jupiter moon Thebe
Click for original image.
Though the Jupiter orbiter Juno is in its final orbits as it is running out of fuel, on May 1, 2026 it did a close fly-by of the 50 by 72 mile-wide Jupiter moon Thebe, getting within 3,100 miles.
The picture to the right, cropped and expanded to post here, is the best image released from that fly-by. It is very comparable to a photo taken by the Galileo orbiter on January 4, 2000. Both show the very large crater, dubbed Zethus.
The picture was taken by Juno’s Stellar Reference Unit (SRU) camera, designed not to do science but to “image star fields for navigation.” Thus, the picture is somewhat fuzzy, and was pointed poorly so the moon is on the far right, almost off camera.
It is very unclear how much longer Juno will function. It has apparently survived attempts by the Trump administration to zero out its operating budget, but there have been indications that its fuel supply is low.
Multiple Russian, Chinese, and American satellites in maneuvering dance in orbit
Three different articles in the aerospace media today document multiple maneuvers by multiple military satellites from Russia, China, and America, either doing proximity operations near each other or moving close to another country’s satellites to spy on them.
This article in space.com describes the rendezvous operations of Russia’s Cosmos 2581, 2582, and 2583.
The satellites, known as COSMOS 2581 and COSMOS 2583, got within just 10 feet (3 meters) or so of each other on April 28, according to COMSPOC, a Pennsylvania-based space situational awareness software company. “This wasn’t a coincidental pass — COSMOS 2583 performed several fine maneuvers to maintain this tight configuration,” COMSPOC wrote in a May 1 post on X, which featured an animation of the rendezvous.
The two satellites and a third one, COSMOS 2582, launched to low Earth orbit in February 2025 atop a Soyuz rocket. According to COMSPOC, all three of them were involved in the recent rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO), as was “Object F,” a subsatellite previously deployed by COSMOS 2583.
Then russianspaceweb.com had two different articles describing different similar operations. First, a set of satellites launched in February 2026 appeared to be testing operations in very low orbit, illegally transmitting data using frequencies that the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) allocates for amateur radio operations.
Finally, the website reported a complex dance between Russian, American, and Chinese satellites in geosynchronous orbit.
Almost immediately after entering the geostationary orbit, Kosmos-2589 was “approached” by a presumed American inspector satellite, officially known as USA-325. On April 19, 2026, the US satellite, itself drifting eastward relative to the geostationary position and the Earth’s surface, seemingly overshot Kosmos-2589, but once the Russian satellite stabilized at 98 East longitude, USA-325 stopped and returned. By around April 28, 2026, … one approach under favorable lighting conditions for the “inspector” was within 13 kilometers from Kosmos-2589, according to a team of observers from Exton, PA, cited by COMSPOC.
In turn … Kosmos-2589 essentially occupied a position registered by China under designation CHNSAT-98E, with three Chinese commercial and military satellites deployed in relative vicinity of that location.
… Moreover, in April 2026, China’s presumed inspector satellite — TJS-10 — pre-positioned itself at 92.4 degrees East longitude after an easterly drift, which would put it on a rendezvous course with Kosmos-2589 at 98.0 East longitude. Instead, the Chinese satellite stopped its drift with a maneuver on May 1, 2026, which “fixed” it in a geostationary orbit at 92.4 degrees East longitude, in the vicinity of the US AEHF military satellite, which carries high-security communications of the US military and its allies.
With this last story, we have this almost absurd situation: The U.S. satellites are spying on Russian satellites, which are spying on Chinese satellites, which are spying on American satellites.
All this maneuvering however indicates once again that the ability of commercial satellites to rendezvous with other objects — either to de-orbit space junk or repair damaged satellites — is only going to get better. The military might control these capabilities now, under a veil of secrecy, but such capabilities always leak out into the private sector shortly thereafter.
Russia arrests Angara contractor for fraud
Fraud is a given when it comes to government operations, whether in the U.S. or Russia. A contractor doing work on the production facilities for Russia’s new Angara rocket has now been arrested for stealing more than $7 million.
In May 2026, Gazeta.ru, citing regional courts, reported an arrest of Dmitry Zolotarev, the Director General at OOO RST Genpodryad, which was involved in renovations and upgrades of facilities for serial production of Angara rockets at PO Polyot under a contract with GKNPTs Khrunichev.
Zolotarev and his accomplices were accused of stealing 545 million rubles (approximately $7.3 million) during a period from 2022 to 2025, by submitting the Federal treasury agency in Moscow forged documents with an inflated purchase price of overhead cranes and pocketing the difference. According to Gazeta.ru, Zolotarev was suspected of other similar schemes and faced 10 years in prison if convicted.
Government routinely does a bad job in monitoring its spending, which thus creates an easy temptation for others to put their hands in the cookie jar and take what’s not theirs. We can see this same thing occurring now in the U.S. with many so-called “safety net” programs. Since Russia’s entire aerospace industry is government controlled, this kind of corruption therefore happens frequently within it.