TechCrunch Newsletters - Max Q - More bloopers for Boeing

This past week could’ve been a good one for Boeing and their commercial crew spacecraft, but in fact it was not. Rather the opposite. Meanwhile, SpaceX continues to make strides.

Boeing's second shot at test flight aborted

Boeing was supposed to fly its Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2) last week, but the attempt ran into some problems with valves not opening on the pad just prior to take-off, and that led to a temporary scrub that became an indefinite delay after engineers realized they’d have to take the Boeing Starliner capsule off its launch rocket to get to the bottom of the problem.

Boeing and NASA provided an update on Monday as t the status of the situation: The teams can now open 7 of the 13 total stuck closed valves to open. That doesn’t mean another try at OFT-2 is necessarily imminent, however: Boeing will still likely have to do a deep dive into why this didn’t work right to begin with, even once it comes up with a fix.

The good news for Boeing is that it caught this issue before take-off, unlike the problems that the original OFT mission encountered at the end of 2019 that resulted in a quicker-than-planned return flight, and a failure to reach the International Space Station. The bad news is that this means it’ll be even longer before they can fly Starliner with astronauts on board.

SpaceX stacks Starship and buys its first company

SpaceX had a big week as well, but it was pretty much all good news for the private launch company. They managed to stack their 20th Starship prototype on top of the 4th Super Heavy booster test article, completing the entire Starship launch system for the first time (if only a development version of the same).

They almost immediately unstacked it, since this was just a test and they need to run more on both pieces of the puzzle before they try their first orbital launch, but they’re closer than ever to that.

Meanwhile, an FCC filing revealed that SpaceX recorded another first, having acquired its first company: Swarm, the low-powered small satellite connectivity startup founded by Sara Spangelo and Ben Longmier. The FCC documents were submitted to arrange transfer of control of the communications frequencies that Swarm currently employs to SpaceX, and revealed that Swarm will continue to operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Elon Musk’s space company.

Astra sets a date and ispace eyes the Moon

Would-be SpaceX competitor Astra is getting closer to dropping that ‘would-be’; the company has officially set August 27 as the opening of the launch window for its first orbital commercial payload flight. The payload in question is nothing to sneeze at, either, since it’s a demonstration satellite being flown on behalf of the U.S. Space Force. There are few better anchor customers for Astra to impress as the U.S. DoD provided things go smoothly with this attempt.

Going from orbital activity to lunar, Japanese moon lander startup ispace has raised an additional $46 million in Series C funding, which will support its planned second and third lunar surface missions, which are currently scheduled for 2023 and 2024 respectively.

Join us at TC Sessions: Space in December

Last year we held our first dedicated space event, and it went so well that we decided to host it again in 2021. This year, it’s happening December 14 and 15, and it’s once again going to be an entirely virtual conference, so people from all over the world will be able to join — and you can, too.

• Associate Director, Operations, Endless Frontier Labs at New York University (New York, NY, USA)
• Associate Director, Endless Frontier Labs at New York University (New York, NY, USA)
• Implementation Project Manager at Enveyo (Provo, UT, USA)
• Senior Software Engineer (Backend) at WillowTree (Columbus, OH, USA)
• Senior Software Test Engineer at WillowTree (Columbus, OH, USA)

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