TechCrunch Space: I'm tired of talking about Starliner, too
Hello, and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. Before we dive in, I wanted to quickly plug this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt, our flagship event. We’ve planned a half-day of space industry programming for you, and it includes some of the biggest names in the industry. Check out the full agenda here. Hope to see some of you in October!
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Story of the week
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. In an information vacuum, conspiracies flourish, and at this point, I’m not surprised that people are starting to seriously wonder whether Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will be returning home on Starliner (or whether a SpaceX Dragon will need to be used as a contingency return vehicle).
Per Eric Berger at Ars, one “informed source” estimated a better than 50-50 chance the crew would return on Dragon; another said it was “significantly more likely than not” that NASA would use SpaceX’s vehicle.
If this is the case, it’s hard to see a future for Starliner — and that’s even in spite of the fact that Boeing has spent around $1.6 billion on the program, in addition to the $4.2 billion contract it was awarded by NASA to develop the capsule.
Launch of the week
SpaceX launched Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft to the ISS this week, marking Northrop’s 21st commercial cargo resupply mission for NASA. Notably, NASA did not pack extra spacesuits for Wilmore and Williams, which they’d need if they were going to return on Dragon, per agency officials during a press conference last Friday.
Though the launch went as planned, NASA mission control seemed to tell astronauts on the station that there was an issue with spacecraft’s performance; hours later, the agency issued a statement, saying that Cynus failed to perform a burn of its propulsion system “due to a late entry to burn sequencing.” But the agency added that “Northrop Grumman engineers are working on a new burn and trajectory plan” to allow the spacecraft to arrive as planned at 3:10AM EST August 7.
Click the link to rewatch the launch.
What we’re reading
I was pumped to see plans from Vast for what could be the first private microgravity lab in low Earth orbit. The company’s Haven-1 will host Redwire Space and European space biotech company Yuri, and no doubt others, given the high demand to conduct research on the International Space Station. More science in space = a win for humanity.
This week in space history
On August 6, 2012, the Mars Curiosity Rover landed on the red planet after traveling from Earth for nearly a year. Please enjoy this incredible footage of the Mission Control room as Curiosity was in the final moments of touchdown on the planet. Did I cry? You bet I did.
