Hey and welcome again to TechCrunch House. It’s changing into a behavior to open every TechCrunch House publication with a little bit of an replace on Boeing’s Starliner mission, so bear with me. Per NASA officers, the spacecraft will now return its two-person crew to Earth no sooner than June 26, as a substitute of the initially deliberate date of June 14. In different phrases, they’ll be spending not less than 20 days on board the Worldwide House Station as a substitute of simply eight.
Learn my story from final week on the causes of the extra delay and what it’d imply for Boeing’s Starliner program.
Wish to attain out with a tip? E-mail Aria at aria.techcrunch@gmail.com or ship me a message on Sign at 512-937-3988. You can also ship a notice to the entire TechCrunch crew at ideas@techcrunch.com. For safer communications, click on right here to contact us, which incorporates SecureDrop directions and hyperlinks to encrypted messaging apps.
The area trade is all abuzz about how SpaceX’s Starship, Blue Origin’s New Glenn and different heavy-lift rockets will change nearly every part. One seemingly consequence is that spacecraft will get larger — a lot larger — as engineers work exterior the constraints of low mass necessities.
There’s one drawback: The present testing regime for spacecraft is concentrated on payloads 4 meters or much less throughout. Gravitics and NASA need to change that, with a brand new settlement aimed toward addressing this dearth of testing and qualification strategies for bigger spacecraft.
Like many extremely valued startups, SpaceX generally permits its staff to money out a few of their shares by promoting to company-authorized exterior buyers.
TechCrunch has gotten a peek at an inside SpaceX doc about such a young provide from Could 2022. Musk posted on X final month that SpaceX holds such gross sales for workers about each six months.
These paperwork provide attention-grabbing insights into the buyers who’re licensed to purchase these secondary shares, and the nice offers they get. Click on the hyperlink above to have a look.
Launch of the week
Congratulations to Rocket Lab for nailing its fiftieth Electron rocket launch! To commemorate the large milestone, the corporate posted this gorgeous poignant video on X that sums up simply how far Rocket Lab has come.
Do you know…that we posted the agenda for this yr’s area programming at TechCrunch Disrupt? We’re extremely excited by this yr’s lineup, which incorporates a number of the prime founders and buyers working within the area trade. Plus fireplace chats with none aside from Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck and Bridgit Mendler of Northwood House. Click on the hyperlink above to study extra.
This week in area historical past
In final week’s ‘This week in space history’ column, we detailed the flight of Sally Journey, the primary American lady to go to area. This week we’re commemorating her return. On June 24, 1983, she concluded her historic journey when the House Shuttle Challenger touched down in California.
