Category: Behind The Black

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.

• On this day in 1969, the crew of Apollo 10 launched on a mission to the Moon
  This was the full dress rehearsal for Apollo 11, lacking only the actual landing.

• On May 18, 1991 a Soyuz capsule was launched to the Mir station carrying Helen Sharman, the first British tourist
  Her flight was initially to be paid for by an entertainment consortium, but when that went bankrupt the Soviets picked up the tab, figuring the publicity would be worth it. For an explanation of some of the strange things in the video at the link, see chapter 9 in Leaving Earth.

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.

• University to do biology experiment on Dawn Aerospace’s as-yet unflown suborbital spaceplane
  Dawn has only flown a smaller prototype at lower altitudes. It remains unclear when actual suborbital spaceflights will take place.

• Axiom Space establishes a wholly owned Japanese subsidiary
  The goal is to win Japanese commercial and government contracts for its Axiom commercial space station.

• Astronomers find previously unnoticed images of interstellar comet 3I/Atlas in Rubin telescope archive

• Psyche’s raw images from its fly-by of Mars on May 15, 2026

• Chinese pseudo-company Zenk Space aims for June ’26 debut launch of its Zhihang-1 rocket
  Detailed write-up, but all remains uncertain. The company claims it raised more money, and eventually hopes to recover the first stage engines for reuse (similar to ULA’s plan for Vulcan).

• On May 17, 1968 the United States launched Europe’s first satellite, Iris, using a Scout-B rocket from Vandenberg
  Iris studied the Sun’s output, and confirmed earlier space telescope observations that the aurora was caused by charged particles from the solar wind following the Earth’s magnetic field lines down to the poles.

• On May 17, 1969, a day after Venera- 5, the Soviet Venera 6 operated for 51 minutes as it descended through Venus’s nightside atmosphere
  At seven miles altitude its ceased operations due to the pressure from the Venusian atmosphere. Both spacecraft confirmed the hellish atmosphere of Venus, sixty times denser than Earth’s, with temperatures ranging from 750 to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

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.

• Rocket Lab celebrates the completion of its 1,000th Rutherford engine

• German Pangea Propulsion touts successfull static fire testing of its ARCOS methane-fueled “thrust module”
  It will be used on the company’s planned aerospike engine.

• Video of fuel dump by China’s Zhuque-2E upper stage over Minnesota
  Its flight path was polar. Future such launches will produce similar sky shows.

• Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile yesterday agreed in principle to form a joint venture
  They will work together to “fill long-time [cellphone] coverage gaps, especially in rural areas.” It also appears they did this out of fear of Starlink.

• On May 15, 1960 Korabl-Sputnik 1 was launched (known as Sputnik 4 in the West).
  First unmanned test flight of the Soviet’s manned Vostok capsule. It did not de-orbit as planned, with one section remaining in space until 1962, and another until 1965. It also fueled fake rumors a man was trapped on board because the Soviets used taped recordings to test their communications systems.

• On May 15, 1963 the last Mercury mission launched, carrying Gordon Cooper on a 22-orbit mission

• On this day in 1973, Skylab launched, the first American space station
  It was occupied by three crews over the next six months on missions lasting 28, 59, and 84 days. The first and second crews also did extensive repairs to the station, which had been damaged during launch. See chapter 3 in Leaving Earth.

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 pictures of the flight version of its Nova rocket’s first stage, now undergoing final testing
  It sounds as if the launch is about three months away, though once again Stoke has not set a date.

• Rocket Lab is secretly shipping a large payload adapter (used to hold satellites on a rocket) from New Zealand to Wallops
  The tweet speculates this may be the adapter to be used on the first launch of the new Neutron rocket.

• Firefly touts its scheduled 4th Blue Ghost lunar mission near the Moon’s south pole
  It still has to complete two lunar landing missions before this 4th mission can fly.

• NASA provides preliminary mission details for Artemis-3 next year
  The key revelation is that SLS will launch with a dummy upper stage. As this mission will stay in low Earth orbit, there is no need for that stage.

• Video of the launch of Venera 10 on May 14, 1975
  The lander operated for 65 minutes on the surface of Venus, taking the second picture ever of that surface. It worked in conjunction with Venera-9, which launched a week earlier and took the first picture ever of Venus’s surface.

• Air & Space museum touts two Hubble instruments in its collection, brought back by astronauts in the last repair mission in 2009
  The instruments were the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and COSTAR (which had launched in 1993 and fixed the telescope’s focus problem).