TIANZHOU-5 CARGO SPACECRAFT SEPARATES FROM SPACE STATION COMBINATION - The Tianzhou-5 cargo spacecraft, carrying supplies for the China Space Station, separated from the orbiting station combination at 3:26 p.m. Beijing Time on Friday and switched to independent flight, according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMS).   More
(Source: CGTN - May 6)

SPACEX WON'T LAUNCH NEXT PRIVATE ASTRONAUT CREW FOR AXIOM SPACE IN EARLY MAY AFTER ALL - The second-ever private astronaut mission to the International Space Station (ISS) won't launch in the next few days after all. The Houston-based company Axiom Space had been targeting May 8 for the launch of its Ax-2 mission, which will send four people to the ISS aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule for a roughly 10-day stay. But Axiom, SpaceX and NASA (which, as a major ISS partner, must approve such missions) have nixed that plan, pushing the liftoff into the nebulous future.   More
(Source: Space.com - May 6)

WATCH ASTRONAUTS RELOCATE SPACEX DRAGON CAPSULE ON SPACE STATION EARLY SATURDAY - Astronauts will fly the SpaceX Dragon capsule Endeavour to a new port on the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday morning (May 6), and you can watch the action live. Endeavour, which carried the four astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-6 mission to the ISS in early March, is scheduled to undock from the Harmony module's space-facing port at 7:10 a.m. (1110 GMT) on Saturday and redock to the module's forward-facing port 43 minutes later.   More
(Source: Space.com - May 6)

SATELLITE MEGACONSTELLATIONS ARE THREATENING ASTRONOMY. WHAT CAN BE DONE? - Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight; I wish I may, I wish I might have the wish I wish tonight. That well-known nursery rhyme has a number of astronomers wishing away the dawn of all those Earth-orbiting megaconstellations that are dotting the sky today and into the future.   More
(Source: Space.com - May 5)

SPACEX ROCKETS PAST 4,000 STARLINK SATELLITES IN ORBIT WITH ANOTHER FALCON 9 LAUNCH - SpaceX surpassed more than 4,000 Starlink internet satellites in orbit with the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket and another batch of 56 spacecraft Thursday from Cape Canaveral, the company’s fourth mission in less than a week. The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 3:31 a.m. EDT (0731 UTC) Thursday. The predawn mission was SpaceX’s 30th launch of the year, keeping the company on a breakneck pace for nearly 100 rocket flights in 2023, up from 61 missions last year.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - May 5)

STARTUP'S PROPOSED SATELLITE SWARM WOULD CREATE 3D MAPS OF EARTH'S ENTIRE SURFACE - Satellites flying overhead in Earth’s orbit largely provide a two-dimensional view of our planet, but a Florida-based company is hoping to change that by using satellites to routinely build 3D maps of Earth’s entire surface. During the Geospatial World Forum, held from May 2 to 5 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, NUVIEW announced its plans to launch a constellation of satellites, which will use LiDAR to map Earth in three dimensions.    More
(Source: Gizmodo - May 5)

RUSSIAN COSMONAUTS RELOCATE AIRLOCK ON INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION SPACEWALK - Two Russian cosmonauts reentered an airlock after successfully relocating a different airlock during a spacewalk outside of the International Space Station. Expedition 69 commander Sergey Prokopyev and flight engineer Dmitry Petelin, both with the Russian federal space corporation Roscosmos, completed their outing on Wednesday (May 3) at 11:11 p.m. EDT (0311 GMT May 4). During the 7 hour and 11 minute spacewalk, the cosmonauts oversaw the move of an equipment airlock from the side of one module to the side of another on the Russian segment of the space station.   More
(Source: Space.com - May 5)

ARTEMIS 1 CUBESAT NEARING END OF MISSION - A cubesat launched as a secondary payload on Artemis 1 may end its operations at the end of the month unless it can get its propulsion system working. The LunaH-Map spacecraft was one of 10 cubesats launched as secondary payloads on the inaugural flight of the Space Launch System last November. The spacecraft had planned to use an ion propulsion system on the 6U cubesat to perform a maneuver as it flew by the moon days later, ultimately allowing it to go into orbit.   More
(Source: SpaceNews - May 4)

EUROPE’S MAJOR SATELLITE PLAYERS LINE UP TO BUILD STARLINK COMPETITOR - A consortium of nearly every major European satellite company announced Tuesday that it plans to bid for a proposed satellite constellation to provide global communications. Essentially, such a constellation would provide the European Union with connectivity from low-Earth orbit similar to what SpaceX's Starlink offers. The bid, which includes large players such as Airbus Defence and Space, Eutelsat, SES, and Thales Alenia Space, comes in response to a request by the European Union for help in constructing a sovereign constellation to provide secure communications for government services, including military applications.   More
(Source: Ars Technica - May 4)

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