Artemis III 🌍 A low Earth orbit demonstration mission 🔧 Practicing critical rendezvous and docking operations 🌙 Paving the way for Moon landings More info in this explainer:

THE ONLY PHOTO EVER TAKEN OF CONCORDE AT MACH 2 This remarkable image shows Concorde G-BOAG cruising at Mach 2 (1,350 mph) over the Irish Sea in April 1985. Captured from an RAF Panavia Tornado fighter jet, the rendezvous lasted just four minutes as the Tornado, rapidly running low on fuel, struggled to keep pace with the supersonic airliner. At Mach 2, Concorde's 204-ft airframe stretched by nearly six inches due to aerodynamic heating. Temperatures reached approximately 127°C (261°F) at the nose and wing leading edges, while its distinctive high-reflectivity white paint helped dissipate the intense heat generated by supersonic flight. 📸: ConcordePhotos

At 5:13 am on May 25, 2026, the crew of Shenzhou-23 astronauts entered the Chinese space station and met with the crew of Shenzhou-21 astronauts on orbit at the Tiangong. This was the 8th "space rendezvous" in Chinese space history.

[📢] Hey, Londoners and New Yorkers🏙️ So lovely running into you in person this comeback.😉 Until our next rendezvous… #ATEEZ# #에이티즈# #GOLDENHOUR_Part4# #Adrenaline#

On the 29th July in 1588 (Gregorian/New Style calendar): The Spanish Armada was sighted off the Lizard in Cornwall, and the English fleet under Charles Howard and Francis Drake began to put to sea from Plymouth.... The Spanish fleet (under the Duke of Medina Sidonia) was first sighted by the English off the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall. Beacons quickly relayed the warning along the south coast toward London. The main English western squadron was in Plymouth. Lord Charles Howard of Effingham (Lord High Admiral) held overall command, with Sir Francis Drake as vice-admiral (and John Hawkins as rear-admiral). The incoming tide initially trapped many ships in the harbour. As the tide turned, English ships began to work their way out (accounts place the start of departure that day or the following day). Roughly 50–60 English vessels put to sea to gain the weather gage and pursue the Armada, which was sailing eastward in a defensive crescent formation toward a planned rendezvous with the Duke of Parma’s army in the Spanish Netherlands. No major battle occurred on the 29th itself. The first significant engagement came on 31st July (New Style) / 21st July (Old Style) near the Eddystone Rocks off Plymouth. Spanish accounts and later charts (such as the Robert Adams series held by Royal Museums Greenwich) use the New Style dates of 29–31 July for the approach off Cornwall, the English departure, and the first action. The successful harassment of the Armada (combined with storms that devastated the Spanish fleet on its return voyage around Scotland and Ireland) prevented the invasion, boosted English prestige and Protestant confidence, and is widely regarded as a turning point that enhanced England’s naval reputation and contributed to the longer-term rise of English (later British) sea power. England already possessed an effective navy; the campaign demonstrated and enhanced its capabilities. English ships inflicted limited material damage in the Channel actions through long-range gunnery and manoeuvrability; weather and logistical failures caused most Spanish losses.

Sep. 14, 1966: Photograph of Agena at time of tether drop; range 50 feet; taken during the Gemini XI mission during orbit no. 33. Astronauts Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon performed the first direct-ascent (first orbit) rendezvous with an Agena Target Vehicle, docking with it 1 hour 34 minutes.

BREAKING: Inside Impulse Space with Tom Mueller (@lrocket) (SpaceX's 1st Employee) FULL TOUR The famous engineer behind the Merlin engine, now Founder, CEO & CTO of Impulse Space (@GoToImpulse) ICYMI: Merlin still powers Falcon 9 today, the most reliable rocket engine ever flown & the highest thrust-to-weight ever developed. It's the workhorse behind nearly every SpaceX mission: Starlink launches, Dragon crew & cargo flights to the ISS, & booster landings Tom walks us through the factory floor, from the avionics clean room to a live rocket engine firing in the vacuum chamber Impulse is building the in-space mobility layer: the vehicles & engines that move spacecraft after launch, from LEO to GEO, the Moon, infinity & beyond We cover: → Mira: precision maneuvering spacecraft & its saiph thrusters (8 thrusters, ~50 lbs thrust, 5-yr orbit life) → Helios: long haul same-day delivery vehicle (12 tons of LOX/methane, LEO to GEO) → Deneb Engine: 15,000 lbs thrust engine that powers Helios, ox-rich staged combustion, carbon skirt running over 3,000°F → Why 3D printing is "almost a cheat code" for rocket engines → In-house composite tanks, Novaloy, & copper liners machined from 700 lbs down to 25 → 3 spacecraft in orbit + a 1,200-meter rendezvous → Starlink, iterating Merlin & Raptor, & working with @elonmusk → Nuclear propulsion, the Moon, & why compute needs to move to space 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Tom Mueller, Founder, CEO & CTO of Impulse Space (00:49) Inside Impulse Space (02:32) Avionics Bay floor (02:59) Building rockets at home (03:50) Mira and Helios (08:00) Why Tom left SpaceX (09:33) The Deneb Engine walkthrough (11:42) Testing in Mojave (12:23) Favorite part of the Engine (13:30) How it's 3D Printed (14:21) Why 3D Printing changes everything (16:54) Finding Talent for COPVs (17:28) No Modern hardware without software (19:52) The Mill Turn explained (22:42) Payload Deck Design (25:28) Entering the Secret Area (30:48) Thrust, Flow Rate, & 100 Sensors (32:13) Collision avoidance in Orbit (32:57) The Electric Propulsion Chamber (34:28) Nuclear Electric is the future (38:49) Data Centers in Space (40:28) SpaceX & Starlink's Growth (41:10) Working with Elon (42:07) If not CEO, then what? (42:32) Moon matters more than Mars

🚀 60 years ago today, Gemini IX-A launched Cernan and Stafford for a three-day mission riddled with mishaps. Cernan performed America’s 2nd EVA which he called “the spacewalk from hell” as he became the first person to orbit Earth entirely outside a spacecraft. From Gemini Remastered: “Before launch, Deke Slayton, who now ran flight crew operations, entered the room where Stafford was suiting up and asked the suit technician to leave and closed the door. He expressed NASA’s concerns about the EVA and added “In case Cernan dies out there, you’ve got to bring him back, because we just can’t afford to have a dead astronaut floating around in space.” Stafford set out his concerns about how difficult that would be and ultimately, he was Commander and he’d make the call. After suiting up, Cernan quizzed Stafford: “Deke was in there talking to you quite a while. What did he say?” Stafford replied: “He just said he hoped we’d have a good flight.” Launch day came May 17, but the rendezvous-target Agena took a nosedive into the ocean for its launch. NASA switched to a backup ATDA target vehicle (which failed to deploy properly in orbit, leaving it useless, looking like an “angry alligator”). The Gemini IX crew faced multiple launch scrubs over 17 days, with six separate entries into the spacecraft for launch. Cernan was to test a new AMU backpack with hydrogen peroxide thrusters. 80 Velcro patches were bonded to the exterior of the spacecraft and his gloves to assist in crawling to the AMU, where he was to do an untethered free-floating spacewalk — a bold mission plan that did not succeed until McCandless did it in 1984. Cernan’s suit was made extra fire retardant to resist burn through by the AMU thrusters. But this made it very rigid and difficult to move in space (like a “rusty suit of armor”). Every movement required immense exertion, which caused him to sweat profusely, overwhelming his suit's environmental control system and causing his helmet faceplate to completely fog up. He had to use his nose to wipe a small visibility window in his faceplate as he fumbled from a lack of handholds. His intense thrashing ripped through seven inner layers of heavy thermal insulation on the back of his suit, leaving a triangle of skin unprotected. When the spacecraft rotated into the daytime side of its orbit, the exterior of the suit was hit by raw, unfiltered sunlight at a blistering 250°F. Without the insulation, the searing solar heat baked right through the remaining pressure bladder layer. Cernan recalled feeling a scalding, fiery sensation on his lower back but had to ignore it because he was already fighting for his life while blind from the fogged visor. His heart rate hit 180bpm and the flight surgeon was concerned he could lose consciousness. He also lost communications fidelity, resorting to a binary code: one squawk for yes, two for no. Cmdr. Stafford decided to cancel the AMU jetpack test. Cernan called out to CAPCOM Neil Armstrong in mission control: “You might tell everyone down there I’m sure sorry about this.” Because the pressurized suit had ballooned in size with outstretched limbs larger than the hatch opening, and with Cernan completely exhausted and blind, getting back inside the spacecraft was a brutal physical struggle for both men. Together, they used the mechanical hatch-cranking mechanism to literally compress Cernan’s stiff suit and force the door closed against his helmet causing him to almost black out from an inability to breathe. Overall, Cernan lost 13 lbs. from extreme dehydration. Despite the setbacks, NASA learned valuable lessons about spacesuit design and the need for visible handholds for EVAs (which was corrected for Apollo). Here are some heroic artifacts from the Future Ventures museum: 1) The newest addition to the collection, Cernan’s Constellation Chart and Greek Alphabet Cue Card, as annotated and flown on Gemini IX-A. On the upper border, Cernan refers to the planned rendezvous with the ATDA. The accompanying Gemini 9 constellation chart showed key navigation stars labeled with their Greek letter designations (like α Lyrae, β Orionis). Since astronauts weren’t trained astronomers, they carried a Greek letter cheat sheet to quickly decode those symbols into star names and locations. They would use the legend to match ‘α’ to the brightest star in a constellation, ‘β’ to the next, and so on, letting them correctly identify stars through the spacecraft’s sextant/telescope for celestial navigation. 2) Original left-handed glove from the Gemini G3C space suit made by the David Clark Company. 3) ITT Interphones used by the frogmen during recovery at sea; it was a pluggable hard line (like in the Matrix) used throughout Gemini after splashdown. The frogmen welcome the astronauts home and let them know when it was safe to open the hatch. For Apollo, NASA switched to Motorola radios. 4) Photo of the frogmen welcoming a weary Cernan and Stafford back to Earth, with orange interphones clearly visible.