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.
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
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.
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
Some of my first memories are the weeks prior to Alan Shepard’s first launch. I remember more that a few of those rockets exploding. Brave souls sitting atop those first rockets.
One of my other favorite Shepard memories is February 6, 1971. During the Apollo 14 mission, Alan Shepard became the first person to play golf on the moon.
Fore!
RM:
My earliest memory of Mercury was the coverage of John Glenn’s flight.
During Apollo 14, the junior high school I was attending had a TV set running during one of the EVAs. Unfortunately, my English class took priority.
I recall when the first Anik was announced. Canada was, apparently, the first country to have its own domestic satellite. However, the implication from the government information was that it was a completely Canadian project.
As it turned out, it was designed and built by Hughes and had a few extra Canadian bits and pieces bolted on, according to the website Gunter’s Space Page:
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/anik-a.htm
Its service area was northern Canada, particularly north of 60 deg. Before it was launched, communication with the south was largely by radio, including shortwave. I recall listening to what, at the time, was called the CBC Northern Service. After the Anik was commissioned, I believe that the service was closed down, though, for many years afterward, there was still a CBC Northern Quebec Service on shortwave.
Falcon Heavy from above:
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/spacex-falcon-heavy-launch-seen-from-space-satellite-photos
Saddling SpaceX with A.I. as much as people hate the latter?
Don’t make more folks hate you than is already the case.
Depending on how political winds blow I could see the Bechtel dismantling answered by SLS launching from Boca out of revenge.
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.
That’s quite the an accomplishment, it started providing service three years before it was launched.
Or the dates might be not just for the one satellite.
Jed: This is what I get for simply accepting data given by others. Those are the dates at the tweet, but you are right, there is no way Telesat-3 could have provided any service before 1975.
The 1972 date likely includes the service Telesat began providing on its earlier instruments, launched as part of other satellites.
This is sick
https://phys.org/news/2026-05-masculine-behavior-bad-planet.html
Jeff Wright,
They hate AI on the ground because they mistakenly think it wastes fresh water and drives up their energy prices. Neither is remotely an issue when the data centers are in orbit.
Revenge implies that Elon Musk is telling Jared Isaacman what to do. That’s a big claim, Jeff–can you back it up? In any event, the SLS will never launch from Texas no matter who controls the government.
Jeff Wright,
You should not drink and comment.
“People” do not, in general, hate AI, but you seem to for some reason. Perhaps it’s just part of your general tendency to prefer things from “The Good Old Days” to those of the present day.
The pink elephants aren’t real, Jeff, and neither are your goofy revenge fantasies about SLS. If Musk’s political enemies ever reacquire power, they aren’t going to come to the rescue of SLS, they’re going to shut down human space flight completely – no one will be permitted to escape the Communist Utopia.
Besides, spaceflight is mainly male behavior of the sort that goofball article you linked would definitely not approve. Its authors are exactly the sorts of people who would be in charge if Musk’s enemies take over.
Sitting in living room in front of a Stomberg Carlson white oak cased black & white television watching LCDR Shepard’s preparation & lift off.
My mom & grandma asking me (a 7 year old!) to explain what was going on.
Then one day, years and years later, I looked up and realized I was a LCDR too.
Go with God Admiral Shepard.
Let’ Light This Candle of US human space exploration.
Nate P and Dick Eagleson,
Jeff confuses disagreement for hatred. If you disagree with him about SLS, then you must hate SLS. If you do not favor AI over other software, then you must hate AI.
Many people like AI, despite its faults, but is it a fad like the pet rock was? I don’t think so, but even if it is, there will likely be versions of AI used frequently, unlike pet rocks.
By the way, does anyone have any leftover pet rock shampoo? I ran out decades ago, and no one warned us of the longevity of those things. They are worse than Chia Pets.