Boeing’s Starliner mission is coming back to Earth — empty. After months of data analysis and internal deliberation, NASA leadership announced today that Starliner will be coming back to Earth…
Space
NASA to decide Saturday whether astronauts will ride Boeing’s Starliner home — or use SpaceX’s Dragon instead
NASA officials will announce their final decision on Saturday as to whether two NASA astronauts — Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams — will return to Earth on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft…
America’s space industry seems mature, but the supply chain that provides all the parts and components for rockets, satellites, and other spacecraft is considerably less so. Gimbal Space is aiming to…
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It can be hard to keep up with this fast-paced yet incredibly complex and highly regulated industry — but everything you need to stay up to date is right here, with links to deeper coverage.
The U.S. Department of Defense is a mammoth organization. It not only employs millions of service members and hundreds of thousands of civilian employees, but also has the world’s largest…
NASA and the space industry are in agreement: If we want to establish a permanent human presence on the moon, we’ll need to make use of every native resource we…
Hello, and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. Did you hear? Bridgit Mendler will be joining me onstage at this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt to talk all things ground stations. She’s just…
Robotics
Swarmbotics founders grew ‘obsessed with robot swarms’ and now plan to bring them to the battlefield
Few truly autonomous systems are deployed on the battlefield, but one startup is looking to change that with robotic systems that use cooperative behavior to boost troops’ intelligence and tactical…
A pair of Rocket Lab-made spacecraft are about to embark on a two-step journey. The first step is the 55-hour, 2,500-mile stretch from California to the launch site at Cape…
TechCrunch Disrupt 2024
Bridgit Mendler will talk about building the data highway between Earth and space at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024
Earlier this year, Bridgit Mendler surprised her fans when she announced that she was heading a new space data startup called Northwood Space. With Northwood, the former Disney star and…
Lockheed, which holds a 28.3% stake in Terran Orbital, will take the satellite maker private in a deal that’s expected to close before the end of 2024.
Stoke Space is nothing if not ambitious. The five-year-old launch startup has generated a lot of hype due to its bold plans to develop the first fully reusable rocket, with…
Dawn Aerospace Mk-II is essentially “an aircraft with the performance of a rocket, not a rocket with wings.”
Rocket Lab surpassed $100 million in quarterly revenue for the first time, a 71% increase from the same quarter of last year. This is just one of several shiny accomplishments…
The Palmer Luckey-founded defense startup wants to become a serious rival to longstanding kingpins, and has been clocking some big wins.
Dawn Aerospace’s rocket-powered aircraft soared to new heights in its latest test campaign, as the company looks to build what could be the highest-performance aircraft to take off from a…
Rocket launch providers, satellite operators, and even aviation companies rely on accurate predictions about “space weather,” like solar flares and geomagnetic storms, to inform their operations. But this vital information…
Listen, I’m tired of talking about Boeing’s Starliner, too, but the spacecraft still isn’t home and questions are mounting about NASA’s transparency.
Muon Space closed a new tranche of funding for its space-as-a-service business.
While the company was awarded a massive, $4.2 billion contract to accelerate Starliner development in 2014, it was structured as a “fixed-price” model.
Commercial space station company Vast is building a private microgravity research lab as part of its wider Haven-1 station plans. The module is set to launch no earlier than the…
Hello, and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. In case you missed it, Boeing and NASA decided to keep Starliner docked to the International Space Station for the rest of the…
Regulators gave SpaceX the all-clear to return to launch two weeks after the Falcon 9 rocket experienced an anomaly on orbit.
Satellites are among our most critical infrastructure, providing everything from GPS to disaster coordination, yet their inherent inaccessibility leaves them vulnerable to relatively simple technical issues or attacks. London-based Lodestar…
Our growth as a civilization is tightly coupled to our ability to sufficiently generate ever-increasing amounts of electricity. Could the same be true in space? Star Catcher Industries, a startup…
Astranis has fully funded its next-generation satellite program, called Omega, after closing its $200 million Series D round, the company said Wednesday. “This next satellite is really the milestone into…
Mesa, Arizona-based Rosotics has kept a low profile. From the startup’s website, one would think they are solely focused on selling large metal 3D printers to aerospace and defense customers.…
Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. Before we begin, a quick note: I write this newsletter on Friday and it gets delivered to you on Monday. So if I…
The now-scrapped moon mission would have been the U.S. space agency’s first resource-mapping mission off planet Earth.
Bill Weber is out as chief executive at Firefly Aerospace, following a nearly two-year stint in the role, the maker of launch vehicles, lunar landers and orbital vehicles announced late Wednesday.…
