Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. Is it just me or is the news cycle Accelerate This summer?!
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SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is the most reliable launch vehicle in history, but even great rockets sometimes go astray. That’s what happened last Thursday evening, when the rocket’s second stage suffered a catastrophic failure in orbit during a routine launch of a batch of Starlink internet satellites.
This is the story of the week, because it is so surprisingAnd because solving this problem could affect two important upcoming human space missions: Polaris Dawn, a private mission funded by billionaire Jared Isaacman, is scheduled to launch in late July, and NASA's crew-carrying launch is scheduled to launch in mid-August. There's no doubt SpaceX will be quick to get back on its feet.
When SpaceX’s early engineer, Bulent Altan, and longtime investor, Joram Bölklein, looked into the European space sector in the late 2010s, they were surprised at how similar it was to the early days of NewSpace in the U.S. in the early 2000s, when SpaceX and other companies were just getting started.
The pair decided to make an early, personal investment in German startup Isar Aerospace, but also considered making a bigger play to better capture the enormous opportunity it presented to help grow the space sector in both the U.S. and Europe. To that end, they founded Alpine Space Ventures in Munich, Germany, in 2020. Four years later, after two years of fundraising, they closed their first fund of $184 million (€170 million), making it the largest new VC fund dedicated to space globally.
Releases this week
Let's go, Ariane 6, let's go! Europe's newest heavy-lift rocket took to the skies last week. almost That was until the upper stage experienced an anomaly in orbit. The good news is that the anomaly occurred after all the satellites had been deployed, and ESA officials declared it a success. I wrote last week about the risks of bringing Ariane 6 online before launch.
Finally watched Ashlee Vance's “Wild Wild Space”, a new documentary that will be on HBO on July 17th. I really, really enjoyed it. If you have 90 minutes to spare this week, I highly recommend grabbing a bowl of popcorn and sitting down to watch it.
