Someone once said that May is a month of renewal, growth, and endless possibilities. That was certainly the case for spaceflight last month, as these striking visuals attest.
May 2023 was a busy one for spaceflight, with private missions blasting off to the ISS, a space tourism venture getting back on track, and an assortment of previously launched spacecraft navigating the cosmic highways. Here are some of our favorite visuals from the previous month.
The Hakuto-R Mission 1 lunar lander, operated by private Japanese company ispace, crashed onto the Moon just prior to touchdown on April 25. In May, researchers from Arizona State University released images gathered by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, showing the location of the crashed lander and its associated debris field.
The International Space Station became a crowded place with the arrival of the four-person Ax-2 crew on May 22—the second private space mission from Axiom Space—bringing the orbiting lab’s total population to 11 (NASA astronaut Frank Rubio is not pictured). The Ax-2 crew and the Expedition 69 crew members posed for this photo on May 23.
For the first time in two years, Virgin Galactic flew its VSS Unity spaceplane to space, or at least the company’s definition of space, reaching a maximum altitude of 54.2 miles (87 kilometers). With the successful crewed flight, Virgin Galactic plans to restart its commercial space tourism offering, possibly as early as June.
The Richat Structure, also known as the “Eye of the Sahara,” is shown in this striking photo taken from the International Space Station. The eroded geological dome is located in Mauritania, and it was photographed from an altitude of 259 miles (416 kilometers) above the African continent.
On May 19, NASA announced that Blue Origin will design, develop, and test the space agency’s second crewed lunar lander for the upcoming Artemis 5 mission and subsequent missions to the lunar surface (SpaceX was previously chosen to develop the first). The Jeff Bezos-founded company will build it alongside its National Team partners Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Draper, Astrobotic, and Honeybee Robotics, and do so under a $3.4 billion contract. The conceptual image is very cool, depicting the fully reusable human landing system in action.
Cosmonauts Dmitri Petelin and Sergey Prokopyev performed a space walk outside the ISS on May 12 to deploy and activate a radiator on the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module. The spacewalk took five hours and 14 minutes to complete.
Also in May, a team of engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) unleashed EELS, or the Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor. It’s just a prototype, but a similar robotic snake could eventually slither through various alien terrains, including the Moon or Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus.
Okay, this is admittedly not the best photo of the Moon we’ve ever seen, but taking pretty pictures isn’t what the NASA-funded CAPSTONE mission was designed to do. The microwave-sized probe, operated by Advanced Space, is currently testing a unique elliptical orbit around the Moon, while also testing new navigation technologies. Still, the new Moon photo—the first taken by CAPSTONE—reminds us that the tiny satellite is out there performing important work.
In May, bankrupt satellite launch company Virgin Orbit sold off its assets, including its iconic Cosmic Girl—a modified Boeing 747 aircraft used to launch rockets from high altitudes. Stratolaunch scooped up the plane and didn’t waste any time, releasing conceptual images of the plane with updated livery. Makes you wonder what thoughts crossed Virgin Orbit founder Richard Branson’s mind when he saw what they did–or will do—to his former plane, which currently looks like this:
This timelapse shows a Falcon 9 rocket launching from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on May 19. The rocket deliver a batch of 22 upgraded next-gen Starlink satellites.
Spring is in the air, and that means it’s alligator breeding season. Kennedy Space Center hosts its fair share of gators, including this young specimen, found resting on a concrete structure at the Florida spaceport.
