Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. We’ll have to wait a little longer for the return of Boeing’s Starliner capsule from the International Space Station — the capsule and its two astronauts will stay at the station for twice as much time as originally planned, to give mission operators additional time to conduct tests […]
Astroscale’s space junk inspection satellite snaps a close-up photo of a discarded rocket stage
Astroscale’s space junk observation satellite has moved within striking distance to a discarded rocket upper stage that’s been floating around Earth for nearly 20 years, taking close-up pictures — preliminary to actually deorbiting the object in a future mission. The company released an image captured by its satellite from a distance of just 50 meters […]
We’re about to learn a whole lot more about how the human body reacts to space
We could be entering a renaissance for human spaceflight research, as a record number of private citizens head to space — and as scientists improve techniques for gathering data on these intrepid test subjects. A sign that the renaissance is imminent appeared earlier this week, when the journal Nature published a cache of papers detailing […]
TechCrunch Space: A week that will go down in history
Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. What a week! In the same seven-day period, we watched Boeing’s Starliner launch astronauts to space for the first time, and then we got to watch those two astronauts dock with the International Space Station. And we also got to see SpaceX launch Starship for the fourth time […]
TechCrunch Space: China’s victory
Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. Unfortunately, Boeing’s Starliner launch was delayed yet again, this time due to issues with one of the three redundant computers used by United Launch Alliance, the rocket provider, to initiate the launch sequence. Those computers are supposed to work in sync, but one of them was moving a […]