Welcome back to TechCrunch Space! SpaceX is launching its Transporter-10 rideshare mission today. These missions are exciting to track as they carry numerous payloads, including those from many startups. This mission will include satellites from Apex Space, Unseen Labs, Care Weather, True Anomaly, and more. Godspeed!
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Highlighting Intuitive Machines’ first lunar lander mission, this week we focus on the propulsion system of Odysseus, showcasing a notable aspect of its architecture deserving recognition.
Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus descending. Image Credits: Intuitive Machines
An internal congressional memo raises doubts on Rocket Lab’s claim about the readiness of its Neutron rocket to meet a crucial Space Force contract deadline, citing lack of a credible launch path by a specified date.
Image Credits: NASA (opens in a new window)
SpaceDotBiz’s Ian Vorbach interviews Payam Banazadeh, founder of Capella Space, in a candid discussion about entrepreneurship, venture-backed startups, and the remote sensing industry.
An example of Capella’s high-res “Spot” imagery, capturing an ExxonMobil refinery facility in Singapore. Image Credits: Capella Space
This week in space history
On March 6, 2009, the Kepler space telescope was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to search for Earth-sized planets orbiting stars like our sun. It revealed the abundance of exoplanets in the universe.
“When we started conceiving this mission 35 years ago, we didn’t know of a single planet outside our solar system,” said William Borucki, the Kepler mission’s founding principal investigator. “Now that we know planets are everywhere, Kepler has set us on a new course full of promise for future generations to explore our galaxy.”
Kepler discovered over a thousand planets, with a few in the “habitable zone” of stars, similar in size to Earth but enlarged in the diagram below by 25 times compared to the stars.
Image Credits: NASA/Ames/JPL
