spacecraft

The company has faced two main issues related to communications and the spacecraft rotation rate — and it’s largely solved both those problems.

Follow the space industry long enough and you’ll notice that an outsized number of catastrophic failures of satellites or launch vehicles can be traced to a physically small but ubiquitous part: val

Space is a tough place for electronic circuits since radiation causes short circuits that result in mission failure, said Hwai Lin Khor, vice president of Zero-Error Systems. Many companies currently

Varda Space Industries, the in-space manufacturing startup that wants to revolutionize the production of pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and more, is in the process of raising $25 million in new capit

Another Mars robot is settling in for a long, long sleep. With dust caking its solar panels, InSight has been losing the ability to recharge for months — in the spring, it was operating at just one-

The portable power bank first came on the scene in 2001, and since then, on-the-go charging has been a possibility for most mobile device users. Now, a new space company wants to bring the concept of

South Korea is headed for the moon. Last night, the country launched its first-ever lunar mission — in fact, its first-ever mission beyond low Earth orbit. Formerly called the Korea Pathfinder Lunar

When it comes to geospatial and mapping data and how they are leveraged by organizations, satellites continue to play a critical role when it comes to sourcing raw information. Getting that raw data i

Some consolidation is afoot in the world of moving and storage startups: Clutter and MakeSpace, two erstwhile rivals in the market, are merging to form a single company, which will operate under the C

"Carl Sagan had it right, with Voyager and the pale blue dot: If you're anywhere else in the known universe, Earth is the most interesting place to study and be part of."

With the “final frontier” now open to private companies, how do we transform the way we continually update the software that runs in space?

Rocket Lab long ago graduated from underdog launch provider to industry heavyweight (with funding to match). Now the company is planning to go to the moon, Mars and Venus in the next decade.

SpaceX has achieved another major milestone in its Starship fully reusable launch system: It stacked the Starship spacecraft itself on top of a prototype of its Super Heavy booster, which itself is lo

The mystery of who will occupy the final seat on Blue Origin’s debut human spaceflight next week is a mystery no longer: The company revealed today that the winning bidder who forked over $28 mi

SpaceX’s upcoming Starship orbital test flight could end up being a veritable smorgasbord of its technological capabilities, as the company has filed with the Federal Communications Commission (

SpaceX is hoping to attempt to fly its in-development spacecraft Starship to orbit for the first time in July, according to company president Gwynne Shotwell. Shotwell shared the timeline at the Inter

Electric propulsion developer Orbion Space Technology has raised $20 million in a Series B funding round, which it says it will use to scale production capacity of its Aurora propulsion system. The Mi

Max Q is a weekly newsletter from TechCrunch all about space. Sign up here to receive it weekly on Mondays in your inbox. This week, China started staffing up its own space station, and Rocket Lab got

Rocket Lab is developing two spacecraft based on its Photon platform to orbit Mars, studying the planet’s magnetosphere in order to gain a better understanding of the ways in which Mars’ c

Max Q is a weekly newsletter from TechCrunch all about space. Sign up here to receive it weekly on Mondays in your inbox. This week actually includes two, since I was out last week for a Canadian nati