TechCrunch Newsletters - Max Q - A week of firsts

Hello and welcome back to Max Q! Last week was a week of milestones and landmarks. This week I was going to add Rocket Lab’s first Virginia launch to the list, but (sigh) they scrubbed the Sunday attempt because of high winds… we’ll see if they can nail it today.

In this issue:

• A first for NASA’s Artemis program…
• …and Japanese firm ispace
• News from Quantum Space, and more

Max Q is brought to you by me, Aria Alamalhodaei. If you enjoy reading Max Q, consider forwarding it to a friend. 

NASA’s Orion capsule returns to Earth as ispace’s lunar lander takes flight

It was a landmark day for both commercial and public space ventures, with NASA’s Orion capsule returning to Earth just hours after the launch of a privately funded and built lunar lander by Japanese company ispace.

The two missions — the conclusion of NASA’s Artemis I and ispace’s Mission 1 — are some of the clearest signs yet that the moon will likely become a permanent site for scientific missions and commercial activity.

Click here to learn more about each mission and click here to watch my interview with ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada at TC Sessions: Space earlier this month.

More news from TC and beyond

• Arianespace launched the Ariane 5 rocket for the third and final time this year from French Guiana. (Space)
• AST SpaceMobile and NASA signed a Space Act Agreement to formalize information- and data-sharing aimed at increasing space safety. (AST SpaceMobile)
• Elon Musk is turning to SpaceX’s legal team to fill the lawyer void at Twitter due to departures and layoffs. (NYTimes)
• Jeff Bezos will star in an animated series called “Blue Origins Space Rangers” aimed at kids. (TechCrunch)
• Landspace, a Chinese launch firm, failed to send what would have been the world’s first methane-fueled rocket to orbit. (SpaceNews)
• Pixxel has appointed Preston Dunlap, former CTO and chief architect officer of the U.S. Space Force, to its board of directors. (Pixxel)
• Planet recorded record revenues for the third quarter, as the company quickly becomes a bright spot in an otherwise dreary post-SPAC space company performance landscape. (Planet Labs)
• Quantum Space, a company developing robotic platforms for cislunar space, landed $15 million in funding from Prime Movers Lab. (TechCrunch)
• SpaceX’s reported tender offer could value the company at $140 billion. (Bloomberg)
• TransAstra, a ’21 YC alum, landed an SBIR from NASA and an STTR from the DoD to further develop orbital debris and space domain awareness tech. (TransAstra)

• Salesforce Administrator at Second Front Systems (Wilmington, DE 19806, USA)
• Solutions Engineer at Second Front Systems (Wilmington, DE 19806, USA)
• Senior DevSecOps Engineer (AWS) at Second Front Systems (Wilmington, DE 19806, USA)
• Senior Database Developer at Health Research, Inc. (Menands, NY, USA)
• Principal Software Engineer/Developer at Health Research, Inc. (Menands, NY, USA)

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