June 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.
- Fashion company Prada creates the innermost layer — the long johns — worn under Axiom’s lunar spacesuit
This Axiom-Prada spacesuit partnership began in 2023. More information here.
- Data from Juno suggests cosmic rays come from supernovae
The key word is “suggests.” A lot of uncertainty and assumptions in these conclusions.
- Indian startup AnduraX will do first drop test in June of an engineering test vehicle of its proposed orbital space-plane
“The experimental vehicle will be lifted to an altitude of 25,000 meters using a high-altitude balloon before being released under near-stratospheric conditions.”
- Ham radio enthusiasts capture signal of China’s Tianwen-2 asteroid probe as it arrives at asteroid AST469219
At the moment, China has announced nothing about the mission’s status, which was supposed to rendezvous with the asteroid yesterday.
- New Chinese government documents tout plans to build major Long March 9 factory at Wenchang spaceprot
Supposedly to be completed by May 2028. As Jay notes, “Lots of rumors and fake drawings of the rocket are being posted.”
- Video of the June 8, 1960 ground test explosion of an X-15-3, with pilot Scott Crossfield on-board
Crossfield’s description of what happened is quite riveting.
- On June 8, 1965 the Soviets launched the unmanned lander Luna-6 to the Moon
A failed mid-course maneuver resulted in Luna-6 missing the Moon by 99,178 miles.
- On June 8, 1975 the Soviet Union launched Venera 9 to Venus
It successfully landed, operating for 53 minutes and taking the first pictures of the Venusian surface. Its orbiter was also the first satellite to circle Venus. In looking at those pictures now, that talus slope of slabs is very reminiscent of what Curiosity is presently seeing on Mount Sharp on Mars
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The X-15-3 story links to a non-exisitant X account. Here is a link to an article with a video by Crossfield.
https://bangshift.com/bangshiftxl/sitting-inside-sun-video-day-x-15-rocket-plane-exploded-ground-hurt-one/
BillB: Thank you. I have revised the quick link to go to your link.
It also appears that this X account vanished since last night, as Jay linked to it for several history stories, all of which are now inaccessible.
This happened to me for the last two weeks. My x account would be suspended, I would appeal, it would come back in about four days, and then it would be suspended again. No explanation on why except a note saying “violation of terms”.
I think the violation might be from one of these three: I have been vocal on my account agreeing with the Province of Alberta becoming a republic, the failure of King Ferguson passing an unconstitutional income tax in Washington State, and that the Mayor of Seattle’s forehead is so big and empty that it can be used as a stadium for the World Cup.
Jay: So you think the same happened to that Ron Eisele account?
Bob,
Yes. Of course I was being facetious with the reasons for my suspension, the possible problem for Ron might be the same for mine, using multiple computers to access an x account.
So far no problems with using one computer. I guess their algorithm is looking for different IP addresses with the same account as a hacked account.
Jay, I like your idea of a stadium. Then Katie Wilson can pass a huge new tax on stadia, in-use or vacant, in the Seattle area. My suggestion is 22.3% tax on in-use ones, 33.3% tax on vacant ones.
You’re welcome Katie.
New camera
https://techxplore.com/news/2026-06-spiders-ultra-efficient-3d-camera.html
Sound deadening
https://phys.org/news/2026-06-newfound-bulky-effective-soundproofing.html
I would not put it past China to build 15 meter fairings
I always did say that the Venera missions are the finest legacy of the Soviet project.
As for the cosmic rays, supernovae seem as likely a source as any. Aren’t the mightiest of these, iron atoms? Those are made from supernovae. I suppose neutron-star mergers can also release high-velocity ions. But they’re rare.
Zero Hedge headline: Tiny X-Ray Telescope Could Unlock The Moon’s Hidden Chemistry
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/tiny-x-ray-telescope-could-unlock-moons-hidden-chemistry
“Researchers at Tokyo Metropolitan University have used simulations to show that a small, newly developed X-ray telescope could help create a chemical map of the entire lunar surface. Such a map would be a major step toward understanding how the Moon formed, changed, and evolved over time.” …more at the link
I may just live long enough to see the first rap video from the Moon, with a blinged-out lander.
“Is there atmo?
Nada
Ain’t no thing, we lookin’ fly in Prada”
Does this video have to be astronauts, or can some of Musk’s robots perform a flashmob in front of a lunar camera, then all go back to productive work, with the same blank expressions that they had during the video?
Tangentially space related: “xAI is seen as more of a datacenter REIT – a real estate investment trust – than a frontier AI lab.” (Martin Alderson)
https://martinalderson.com/posts/xais-new-rental-business/
As summed up by the brilliant “Pixy Misa” over at Ace of Spades HQ:
That’s a point I’ve argued with people myself. Yes, xAI has huge capital expenditures and wasn’t making money previously. The assumption I kept running into was that it would always lose money. I believe Musk still wants to push forward with Grok and make it better—whether he can catch Anthropic is another question.
Yes, nut Anthropic is riding high inside a bubble that those without blinders are easy to see, burning through cash like at rates that would make Enron say, “Dude….”
Grok is a pretty nifty little (?) LLM nestled snug inside a near-profitable SpaceX conglomerate that’s about to make a big splash on NASDAQ. While he is going full speed ahead on manned lunar and Martian expeditions, all he really needs is that sweet Starlink and Falcon revenue to make Grok fit for purpose. When the bubble pops, Elon could probably hoover up Anthropic and Sam Altman’s shorts, if he wants.
I really don’t get all of this “AI is a bubble” nonsense from people who should know better. AI is rapidly becoming a foundational industrial technology in the same way steam power, electronic communications, steel smelting and electricity generation once did. All of those have seen use cases proliferate exponentially since their debuts and AI bids fair to put them all in the shade in that respect.
I’ve seen some people defend the “AI is a bubble” thesis by analogizing it to the so-called “Dot Com Boom and Bust” of the turn of the current century. The analogy doesn’t hold. The Dot Com Boom was, for the most part, an E-Commerce boom. E-Commerce hasn’t gone away, it has just consolidated and de-silly-fied. Amazon certainly never crashed and burned. But there were plenty of silly niche E-Commerce efforts that proved unsupportable. My own made-up such firm – invented for purposes of ridicule – was toothbrushtoothpasteandcleanunderweartoyouronenightstand.com. Plenty of equivalent real outfits went toes up, but E-Commerce, in total, just grew. The recession that quickly followed the so-called Dot Com Bust wasn’t due to any failure of E-Commerce as an industrial sector, it was due to 9-11.
The early days of automobile and aircraft companies were similar. A ton of little garage-shop players during an early Era of Wonderful Nonsense followed by a ruthless pruning back.
AI is going to be a bit different with the level of computing scale needed to offer even a middling Large Language Model making vertically-integrated garage-scale AI start-ups non-starters. The AI industrial model will be like that of cloud computing – a few giants will dominate the hardware and interconnect infrastructure and the garage-scale start-ups will all be aimed at specialized use-case-based applications.
Scott Crossfield’s book about his experiences was recently published on Project Gutenberg as it was found to be out of copyright. In one lifetime he managed to go from stick-and-fabric airplanes to the edge of space. Fairly interesting read.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78431