Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. It’s become a habit to open every TechCrunch Space newsletter with a bit of an update on Boeing’s Starliner mission, so bear with me. According to NASA officials, the spacecraft will now return its two-person crew to Earth no later than June 26, instead of the originally scheduled June 14. In other words, they will spend at least 20 days on board the ISS. station instead of only eight.
Read my story last week about the reasons for the additional delay and what it could mean for Boeing’s Starliner program.
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The space industry is very busy over how SpaceX’s Starship, Blue Origin’s New Glenn, and other heavy rockets will change almost everything. One possible outcome is that spacecraft will become larger, much larger, as engineers work outside the constraints of lower mass requirements.
There’s one problem: The current testing regime for spacecraft focuses on payloads that are four meters wide or less. Gravitics and NASA are looking to change that, with a new agreement aimed at addressing this lack of testing and qualification methods for larger spacecraft.
Like many highly valued startups, SpaceX sometimes allows its employees to divest some of their shares by selling to outside investors accredited by the company.
TechCrunch took a peek at an internal SpaceX document about this tender offer from May 2022. Published on X Last month, SpaceX held such sales for employees about every six months.
These documents provide interesting information about the investors authorized to purchase these secondary shares, and the good deals they are getting. Click the link above to take a look.
![South African entrepreneur Elon Musk arrives at the 10th Annual Breakthrough Awards Gala at the Academy of Motion Pictures Museum in Los Angeles, California, on April 13, 2024. (Photo by Etienne Laurent/AFP via Getty Images)](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/GettyImages-2147789850.jpg?w=680)
Start of the week
Congratulations to Rocket Lab on successfully launching its 50th Electron rocket! To celebrate this huge milestone, the company posted this very poignant video on the X that sums up just how far Rocket Lab has come.
Did you know…we published this year’s Space Programming Agenda at TechCrunch Disrupt? we Unbelievably Excited about this year’s group, which includes some of the top founders and investors working in the space industry. Plus fireside chats with Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck and Rocket Lab’s Bridget Mendler Northwood space. Click the link above to learn more.
This week in space history
In last week’s This Week in Space History column, we detailed the journey of Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. This week we celebrate her return. On June 24, 1983, it ended its historic flight when the space shuttle Challenger landed in California.
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