NASA's 12,217-Photo Artemis II Vault Is the Closest Thing to Being There

NASA's 12,217-Photo Artemis II Vault Is the Closest Thing to Being There

Most space missions give us a highlight reel. NASA just dropped the entire raw footage. The agency released 12,217 official photos from the Artemis II mission — the flight that took four astronauts farther from Earth than any human in over five decades — and the archive is available for anyone to dig through.

The catalog spans the full mission: pre-launch preparations, the crew at work inside the Orion capsule, the Earth shrinking to a marble, and those now-iconic "Earthset" shots of our planet dropping below the lunar horizon. What makes this different from typical NASA PR drops isn't the quality of the images — it's the sheer completeness. The mundane instrument readings are in there alongside the breathtaking ones.

For researchers and historians, this is the kind of primary source that the Apollo era never produced at scale. For everyone else, it's the closest thing to riding along.

Gobble's Take: Apollo gave us a handful of iconic shots; Artemis II just handed you 12,217 chances to find the next one.

Source: r/space

Spaceflight Is Hard on the Heart — But Artificial Ones Grow Better in Orbit

Spaceflight is rough on living hearts. In microgravity, fluid shifts, the heart works against less resistance, and astronauts' hearts can shrink, weaken, and change shape. Even heart muscle cells flown in petri dishes to the International Space Station can deteriorate.

But Space.com's May 3, 2026 article by Tereza Pultarova points to a stranger split: mini-hearts grown from human stem cells appear to grow faster and in higher quantities in space than comparable lab work on Earth. Arun Sharma of Cedars-Sinai told Space.com that low gravity may help the production process when researchers are making heart organoids from scratch, even though already-formed tissue can suffer in microgravity.

The medical promise is still early. Sharma said the results have not yet been published in full, no space-grown proto-hearts have been used in patients, and human trials are years away. The nearer-term use may be testing heart-disease drugs. Still, the implication is deliciously weird: orbit may be bad for the astronaut heart and good for the lab-grown almost-heart.

Gobble's Take: Space remains deeply rude to the human body, but apparently quite charming to tiny experimental hearts. Science is not beating the weird allegations.

Source: Space.com

Russia's Brand-New Soyuz 5 Rocket Just Nailed Its First Flight

While headlines have been dominated by Starship tests and Falcon Heavy returns, Russia quietly pulled off a milestone: the Soyuz 5 rocket completed its debut launch successfully in late April. It's Russia's first new homegrown launch vehicle in years, designed to modernize a fleet that has long relied on Soviet-era hardware.

The Soyuz 5 is a medium-class rocket intended to eventually replace aging vehicles in Russia's lineup and potentially compete for commercial launch contracts. A clean debut is significant — first flights of new rockets fail often enough that success on the first attempt is never a given — and it signals that Russia's domestic space manufacturing pipeline is still producing.

The launch market is more crowded than it has ever been, with SpaceX, ULA, Arianespace, and a growing list of newcomers all competing for payload contracts. Russia just made sure it has a seat at that table.

Gobble's Take: While everyone watches Starship, Russia just quietly showed up to the launch market with new hardware.

Source: Space.com

SpaceX Static Fire Advances Starship Flight 10 — And NASA's Moon Plans With It

After Starship Flight 9 ended badly on May 27, 2025, SpaceX moved quickly into Flight 10 prep. The previous flight saw reused Super Heavy Booster 14 disintegrate during its landing burn over the Gulf of Mexico, while Ship 35 tumbled during reentry and was lost over the Indian Ocean. Ten days later, on June 6, SpaceX completed a full-duration static fire of all 33 Raptor engines on Super Heavy Booster 16 at Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas.

For Flight 10, the source says Booster 16 is the booster in play, with a planned return to the launch tower's chopstick catch attempt. The new upper stage, Ship 36, is expected to aim for a controlled splashdown, likely in the Indian Ocean, so SpaceX can refine reentry procedures after the Flight 9 anomaly.

That test matters well beyond Texas. NASA has selected Starship as the Human Landing System that is supposed to carry astronauts from lunar orbit to the Moon's surface for Artemis III and later missions, with roughly $4 billion invested in that capability. The SLS rockets and Orion capsules prepared at Kennedy Space Center handle the first leg, but without a certified Starship lander waiting in lunar orbit, the architecture gets very wobbly very fast.

Flight 10 still needs more than hardware confidence. After the Flight 9 vehicle losses, the FAA opened a mishap investigation, and SpaceX cannot fly Flight 10 until that inquiry is closed and its launch license is updated. Industry projections in the source pointed to a possible July 2025 window, contingent on testing and regulatory clearance.

Gobble's Take: Artemis may launch from Florida, but a lot of its confidence is currently being stress-tested in Texas flame trenches.

Source: Space Coast Defense

In Case You Missed It

Yesterday's top stories:

• Denmark's SAGA Space Architects Joins ESA Contract to Study Robotic Lunar Shelter
• China Is Running Apollo's Playbook — While the U.S. Bets Everything on SpaceX
• George Lucas Promised Asteroid Mines. We Built an Orbital Garbage Patch and a $55M Joyride Industry.