Watch live as Boeing and NASA attempt to bring empty Starliner back to Earth

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Boeing Starliner docked to ISS

Image Credits: NASA (opens in a new window)

After 93 days on orbit, Starliner is coming home. 

The spacecraft is a “go” for undocking from the International Space Station at 6:04 p.m. EST, though it will be leaving its two-person crew behind, and you can watch the drama unfold live.

Those crew members, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, closed the hatch on Starliner for the final time earlier today. They’ll be monitoring the spacecraft as it makes its way through the atmosphere this evening, before eventually landing in New Mexico shortly after midnight. 

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft launched to orbit on June 5. This crewed test mission was the critical final step before the company could start providing regular crew transportation services to the space agency, as part of a $4.2 billion contract it won way back in 2014. 

But the spacecraft experienced technical issues shortly before docking with the space station, including several malfunctioning thrusters and helium leaks in the propellant system. While NASA and Boeing engineers spent weeks trying to understand the root cause of the issues — and ultimately extending the mission from seven days to more than 90 — the space agency ultimately decided that Starliner should make its return to Earth empty. 

Wilmore and Williams will stay on the station until February 2025 and return on a SpaceX Dragon capsule instead. SpaceX is currently the only American provider of astronaut transportation services. Boeing is meant to be the second, and the aerospace firm says it’s committed to continuing with the Starliner program despite the anomalies. But it’s unclear how long it will take for the company to have the next spacecraft ready for a test mission.

NASA will start streaming coverage of Starliner’s departure at 5:45 p.m. EDT. Click on the video below to watch. But wait, there’s more!

The spacecraft is expected to make a soft landing using parachutes and airbags at New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range shortly after midnight EDT. Willcox, Arizona, Dugway Proving Ground in Utah and Edwards Air Force Base in California are also available as back-up landing sites. NASA will cover the reentry and landing in a separate stream that begins at 10:50 p.m. EST — assuming all goes well, you can watch the landing below. 

A new startup from Figure’s founder is licensing NASA tech in a bid to curb school shootings

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Cover scanner

Image Credits: Cover

In 2013, there were 26 reported school shootings in the U.S. That figure rose to 82 a decade later. America has a school shooting problem, this much we can agree on. The cause of — and solution to — the issue, on the other hand, is where things start to fall apart. It has become one of the most polarizing topics for a very polarized country. Solutions range from far stricter gun enforcement and more robust mental health investments to locking doors and arming teachers.

The dramatic uptick in instances has create a cottage industry of tech startups hoping to address the problem. There’s ZeroEyes, which uses AI imaging monitored by law enforcement, panic alert system Centegix and scanner-maker Evolv Technology, among others. Studies conducted by research institutes like Johns Hopkins have, however, called their efficacy into question.

Cover, a new startup from Archer and Figure AI founder Brett Adcock, thinks it has cracked the code. At its core, the company’s approach isn’t wholly dissimilar from existing methods like metal detectors and scanners, in that it monitors a school’s entryway. A pair of the objects seen above are mounted on a doorway, scanning those who walk through.

Cover says what sets it apart is the underlying technology it employs, which has been exclusively licensed from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). In fact, the startup is headquartered in Pasadena, California, as several employees at the nearby JPL facility have joined on.

Adcock compares the underlying technology to full-body scanners that supplement metal detectors at many airports. “Our system is very similar to that, but it’s, like, 10x more powerful and accurate,” he told TechCrunch. “So, we can basically do very long-distance scanning. Ten to 15 feet away, we can scan somebody, instead of having them sit here for a couple of seconds in line.”

The comparison to TSA scanners, however, points to what could well prove a major hurdle for the technology’s wide-scale adoption. The topic has been a minefield of privacy advocate pushback, owing to their ability to effectively see under clothing. In 2019, the TSA announced that it would require full-body scanners to add a layer of privacy protection. Such concerns will likely be exacerbated by the fact that the technology will largely be scanning minors in a school setting.

Adcock explains that the system will be monitored by AI, rather than humans, while only looking for a “finite” number of weapons, including guns, knives and explosives. “That’s all we’ll be looking for,” he said. “We’re not going to surface uncompressed files out of the system. We won’t have a place to store them, we won’t need them. We’re just using an onboard neural net to look for weapons. There will be no [issue with] how we protect people’s faces, because we won’t even log it or store it.”

Once a threat is identified, a cropped image of the object will be made available to administration.

How opt-in this system will ultimately be and what alternatives will be in place falls at the feet of the schools and districts that choose to implement the technology. The system will identify potential risks based on factors including size, shape and material. The latter, for instance, should help tell the difference of a handgun from a squirt gun.

“People should not be bringing squirt guns into school during this level of security risk,” Adcock said. “I would say if people are bringing in a squirt gun, we’d really want to detect it. Now, I do think we’ll actually be able to detect the difference between a squirt gun and a [hand]gun, because metal and water are very different. I think the image will be very helpful here in figuring out whether it’s a false positive.”

Like Figure AI, Cover is being bootstrapped by Adcock, who has thus far put around $2 million into the young startup.

SpaceX scores $843M NASA contract to de-orbit ISS in 2030

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ISS on orbit

Image Credits: NASA (opens in a new window)

NASA has selected SpaceX to develop a spacecraft that will de-orbit the International Space Station in 2030 — a contract valued at as much as $843 million, the agency announced Wednesday.

The ISS is nearing the end of its operational life, and as plans for new, commercially owned space stations heat up, the one that started it all will eventually have to be safely disposed of at the end of the decade.

Few details about the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle, as NASA calls the craft, have been released so far. However, NASA clarified that the vehicle will be different from SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, which delivers cargo and crew to the station, and other vehicles that perform services for the agency. Unlike these vehicles, which are built and operated by SpaceX, NASA will take ownership of the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle post-development and operate it throughout its mission.

Both the vehicle and the ISS will destructively break up as they reenter the atmosphere, and one of the big tasks ahead for SpaceX is to ensure that the station reenters in a way that endangers no populated areas. 

The launch contract for the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle will be announced separately. 

NASA and its partners had been evaluating using a Russian Roscosmos Progress spacecraft to conduct the de-orbit mission, but studies indicated that a new spacecraft was needed for the de-orbit maneuver. The station’s safe demise is a responsibility shared by the five space agencies that operate on the ISS — NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, European Space Agency, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and State Space Corporation Roscosmos — but it is unclear whether this contract amount is being paid out by all countries.  

TechCrunch has contacted NASA for more details and we will update this post if we hear back.

NASA cancels $450M Viper moon mission, dashing ice prospecting dreams

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Image Credits: NASA (opens in a new window)

NASA has canceled a $450 million program to map water ice deposits on the moon after cost overruns and scheduling delays.

That program, called Viper — the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover — was scheduled to fly on Astrobotic’s second lunar lander mission next year. The mobile robot was due to conduct a 100-day mission to map lunar ice and use a 1-meter drill to detect and analyze these ice deposits. It would’ve been NASA’s first resource-mapping mission off planet Earth. 

Water will be vital to any human expansion beyond earth. Other NASA missions have helped scientists confirm the presence of water on the moon, but we still don’t have a good understanding of where the most water-rich areas are, or what form the ice is in, like ice crystals or water molecules bonded to soil. The agency said it would use Viper’s findings to inform future landing sites for crewed missions to the moon under its flagship Artemis program.

But it isn’t just NASA that would’ve benefited from the mission data. A number of startups have set their sights on lunar prospecting and mining, with the aim of using naturally harvested water ice as propellant for longer-duration stays on the planet or as a way station to Mars. 

The mission architecture was complex. NASA officials wanted to send Viper into the moon’s permanently shadowed regions, which are some of the coldest areas of the solar system, and operate it in near-real time from Earth relying, in some areas, on only computer simulations for navigation.

The agency doesn’t yet have a good understanding of what the soil in some of these areas is like, so they were designing the rover to operate in a variety of conditions. The solar-powered rover would’ve also been up against the moon’s long nights; due to these conditions, the rover would’ve needed to land on the moon during the start of the lunar “summer season” on the South Pole.

Beyond these technical challenges, the mission was also going to be delivered to the moon using Astrobotic’s Griffin lander, as part of a contract awarded to that company under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. It was a high-stakes, heavy and expensive payload to place on an untested lander; Astrobotic’s first lunar mission, using a smaller lander called Peregrine, launched at the beginning of this year but failed to reach the moon. 

The mission was originally slated to launch in late 2023, but that was pushed to the fourth calendar quarter of this year. NASA officials further delayed it to September 2025. The Griffin lander was independently delayed until the same time frame, and although Viper is canceled, that mission will move forward. 

“Continuation of VIPER would result in an increased cost that threatens cancellation or disruption to other CLPS missions,” NASA said in a press release. 

The 1,000-pound robot has been fully assembled but hasn’t finished pre-flight testing. As a result, NASA will save around $84 million in development costs, officials said during a press conference Wednesday, though the agency has already spent $450 million on the program. 

Joel Kearns, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for exploration, said Wednesday that the agency was looking to take Viper apart and reuse some of its scientific instruments and components on future moon missions, though the rover could still be used as-is if any commercial or international partners express interest. 

Whisper Aero is working with NASA to bring its ultra-quiet tech to outer space

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ISS on orbit

Image Credits: NASA (opens in a new window)

Space is louder than one might think. Crewed spacecraft, whether that be a transportation vehicle or a station module, are made noisy by life support systems, electronic fans, radios and crew activity. NASA has long been concerned about the effects of this acoustic environment on its astronauts, and the agency has introduced a number of modifications over the years to make the International Space Station a quieter place.

But there’s still plenty of room for improvement. Whisper Aero, a Tennessee-based startup best known for its ultra-quiet electric propulsor for aircraft, drones and even leaf blowers, scored a new NASA contract to design the quietest possible fan that’s suitable for crewed space environments. At the end of the six-month effort, the startup is aiming to have prototype parts to show to NASA; if the agency deems this Phase 1 project successful, Whisper would likely move on to test a design prototype next year. 

In Phase 2, NASA and Whisper would compare the acoustic and aerodynamic estimates from this Phase 1 small business and innovation research (SBIR) contract with the measurements of its fan and a baseline NASA Spacecraft Cabin Ventilation Fan. 

“Unless you’re using significantly different technology, you’re going to end up with the same kind of noise challenges and efficiency challenges in space in the crewed quarters as you would on Earth,” Whisper COO Ian Villa explained in a recent interview. 

According to one recent paper, noise exposure levels in the crewed portions of the International Space Station were around 73 decibels (dB) on average. NASA has developed a space fan that achieves 66 dB at two feet; Whisper is aiming to meet or exceed 61 dB at two feet while also being 75% more efficient. That means lighter and smaller, without the silencers that take up weight and space. (For reference, Whisper says a noisy washing machine or vacuum cleaner is between 70 and 80 dB, while normal conversations are around 30 to 60 dB.)

The company is using a lot of the core technologies that it has developed for its terrestrial applications, like its shrouded fan that’s able to move the fan’s blade passage frequency up into the ultrasonic and minimize the remaining tones. But the space environment presents some new challenges. The propulsor has to operate continuously, for a matter of years; the motors running the fans may run for longer than a fan in, say, a leaf blower. 

No doubt acoustic environment planning is also on the minds of the suite of private space station developers that are looking to send up replacements for the ISS when it is decommissioned by the end of the decade. Villa wouldn’t comment on whether Whisper is having conversations with any of these companies, but “it’s definitely a challenge for them,” he said.

“It still remains to be seen exactly how we commercialize, but I think the mission of just being able to deliver cleaner, quieter, more efficient air delivery, that’s what we want, if that’s in space, or if it’s on Earth.” 

The sensitivity of noise — both noise level and noise quality — could be even more important as private stations start to fly luxury space tourism customers, rather than solely professional astronauts. Companies may want to maximize how pleasing the environment is versus their competitors. 

NASA even has an interest in quieter fans for space suits, though Villa said how the company would integrate the fan into a spacesuit is to be determined. 

Noise is “a challenge that often is forgotten until it’s too late, and then you can’t change it,” Villa said. “You can’t fix it. We’ve seen this time and time again on aircraft. It’s almost refreshing to see this in spacecraft, in that they’re actually trying to do something about it at NASA.” 

A new startup from Figure’s founder is licensing NASA tech in a bid to curb school shootings

by with No Comment Tech

Cover scanner

Image Credits: Cover

In 2013, there were 26 reported school shootings in the U.S. That figure rose to 82 a decade later. America has a school shooting problem, this much we can agree on. The cause of — and solution to — the issue, on the other hand, is where things start to fall apart. It has become one of the most polarizing topics for a very polarized country. Solutions range from far stricter gun enforcement and more robust mental health investments to locking doors and arming teachers.

The dramatic uptick in instances has create a cottage industry of tech startups hoping to address the problem. There’s ZeroEyes, which uses AI imaging monitored by law enforcement, panic alert system Centegix and scanner-maker Evolv Technology, among others. Studies conducted by research institutes like Johns Hopkins have, however, called their efficacy into question.

Cover, a new startup from Archer and Figure AI founder Brett Adcock, thinks it has cracked the code. At its core, the company’s approach isn’t wholly dissimilar from existing methods like metal detectors and scanners, in that it monitors a school’s entryway. A pair of the objects seen above are mounted on a doorway, scanning those who walk through.

Cover says what sets it apart is the underlying technology it employs, which has been exclusively licensed from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). In fact, the startup is headquartered in Pasadena, California, as several employees at the nearby JPL facility have joined on.

Adcock compares the underlying technology to full-body scanners that supplement metal detectors at many airports. “Our system is very similar to that, but it’s, like, 10x more powerful and accurate,” he told TechCrunch. “So, we can basically do very long-distance scanning. Ten to 15 feet away, we can scan somebody, instead of having them sit here for a couple of seconds in line.”

The comparison to TSA scanners, however, points to what could well prove a major hurdle for the technology’s wide-scale adoption. The topic has been a minefield of privacy advocate pushback, owing to their ability to effectively see under clothing. In 2019, the TSA announced that it would require full-body scanners to add a layer of privacy protection. Such concerns will likely be exacerbated by the fact that the technology will largely be scanning minors in a school setting.

Adcock explains that the system will be monitored by AI, rather than humans, while only looking for a “finite” number of weapons, including guns, knives and explosives. “That’s all we’ll be looking for,” he said. “We’re not going to surface uncompressed files out of the system. We won’t have a place to store them, we won’t need them. We’re just using an onboard neural net to look for weapons. There will be no [issue with] how we protect people’s faces, because we won’t even log it or store it.”

Once a threat is identified, a cropped image of the object will be made available to administration.

How opt-in this system will ultimately be and what alternatives will be in place falls at the feet of the schools and districts that choose to implement the technology. The system will identify potential risks based on factors including size, shape and material. The latter, for instance, should help tell the difference of a handgun from a squirt gun.

“People should not be bringing squirt guns into school during this level of security risk,” Adcock said. “I would say if people are bringing in a squirt gun, we’d really want to detect it. Now, I do think we’ll actually be able to detect the difference between a squirt gun and a [hand]gun, because metal and water are very different. I think the image will be very helpful here in figuring out whether it’s a false positive.”

Like Figure AI, Cover is being bootstrapped by Adcock, who has thus far put around $2 million into the young startup.

SpaceX scores $843M NASA contract to de-orbit ISS in 2030

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ISS on orbit

Image Credits: NASA (opens in a new window)

NASA has selected SpaceX to develop a spacecraft that will de-orbit the International Space Station in 2030 — a contract valued at as much as $843 million, the agency announced Wednesday.

The ISS is nearing the end of its operational life, and as plans for new, commercially owned space stations heat up, the one that started it all will eventually have to be safely disposed of at the end of the decade.

Few details about the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle, as NASA calls the craft, have been released so far. However, NASA clarified that the vehicle will be different from SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, which delivers cargo and crew to the station, and other vehicles that perform services for the agency. Unlike these vehicles, which are built and operated by SpaceX, NASA will take ownership of the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle post-development and operate it throughout its mission.

Both the vehicle and the ISS will destructively break up as they reenter the atmosphere, and one of the big tasks ahead for SpaceX is to ensure that the station reenters in a way that endangers no populated areas. 

The launch contract for the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle will be announced separately. 

NASA and its partners had been evaluating using a Russian Roscosmos Progress spacecraft to conduct the de-orbit mission, but studies indicated that a new spacecraft was needed for the de-orbit maneuver. The station’s safe demise is a responsibility shared by the five space agencies that operate on the ISS — NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, European Space Agency, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and State Space Corporation Roscosmos — but it is unclear whether this contract amount is being paid out by all countries.  

TechCrunch has contacted NASA for more details and we will update this post if we hear back.

Cover scanner

A new startup from Figure’s founder is licensing NASA tech in a bid to curb school shootings

by with No Comment Tech

Cover scanner

Image Credits: Cover

In 2013, there were 26 reported school shootings in the U.S. That figure rose to 82 a decade later. America has a school shooting problem, this much we can agree on. The cause of — and solution to — the issue, on the other hand, is where things start to fall apart. It has become one of the most polarizing topics for a very polarized country. Solutions range from far stricter gun enforcement and more robust mental health investments to locking doors and arming teachers.

The dramatic uptick in instances has create a cottage industry of tech startups hoping to address the problem. There’s ZeroEyes, which uses AI imaging monitored by law enforcement, panic alert system Centegix and scanner-maker Evolv Technology, among others. Studies conducted by research institutes like Johns Hopkins have, however, called their efficacy into question.

Cover, a new startup from Archer and Figure AI founder Brett Adcock, thinks it has cracked the code. At its core, the company’s approach isn’t wholly dissimilar from existing methods like metal detectors and scanners, in that it monitors a school’s entryway. A pair of the objects seen above are mounted on a doorway, scanning those who walk through.

Cover says what sets it apart is the underlying technology it employs, which has been exclusively licensed from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). In fact, the startup is headquartered in Pasadena, California, as several employees at the nearby JPL facility have joined on.

Adcock compares the underlying technology to full-body scanners that supplement metal detectors at many airports. “Our system is very similar to that, but it’s, like, 10x more powerful and accurate,” he told TechCrunch. “So, we can basically do very long-distance scanning. Ten to 15 feet away, we can scan somebody, instead of having them sit here for a couple of seconds in line.”

The comparison to TSA scanners, however, points to what could well prove a major hurdle for the technology’s wide-scale adoption. The topic has been a minefield of privacy advocate pushback, owing to their ability to effectively see under clothing. In 2019, the TSA announced that it would require full-body scanners to add a layer of privacy protection. Such concerns will likely be exacerbated by the fact that the technology will largely be scanning minors in a school setting.

Adcock explains that the system will be monitored by AI, rather than humans, while only looking for a “finite” number of weapons, including guns, knives and explosives. “That’s all we’ll be looking for,” he said. “We’re not going to surface uncompressed files out of the system. We won’t have a place to store them, we won’t need them. We’re just using an onboard neural net to look for weapons. There will be no [issue with] how we protect people’s faces, because we won’t even log it or store it.”

Once a threat is identified, a cropped image of the object will be made available to administration.

How opt-in this system will ultimately be and what alternatives will be in place falls at the feet of the schools and districts that choose to implement the technology. The system will identify potential risks based on factors including size, shape and material. The latter, for instance, should help tell the difference of a handgun from a squirt gun.

“People should not be bringing squirt guns into school during this level of security risk,” Adcock said. “I would say if people are bringing in a squirt gun, we’d really want to detect it. Now, I do think we’ll actually be able to detect the difference between a squirt gun and a [hand]gun, because metal and water are very different. I think the image will be very helpful here in figuring out whether it’s a false positive.”

Like Figure AI, Cover is being bootstrapped by Adcock, who has thus far put around $2 million into the young startup.

NASA Ingenuity helicopter

Rest in Peace: NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter took its last flight on Mars

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NASA Ingenuity helicopter

Image Credits: NASA (opens in a new window)

Ingenuity, the small helicopter that’s been buzzing around the Red Planet for almost three years, has taken its final flight. NASA announced today that at least one of the helicopter’s carbon fiber rotor blades was damaged during its last mission, grounding it for good.

To say that Ingenuity had a remarkable run is a bit of an understatement: the helicopter was launched as a technology demonstration mission, with engineers hoping to achieve up to five flights with the vehicle. As NASA Administrator Bill Nelson explained in a statement today, Ingenuity was up against the very, very thin Martian atmosphere, which is less than 1% as dense as Earth’s.

There are other challenges, too: Mars is known for epic dust storms, very cold temperatures, and the thin atmosphere does little to shield radiation. But despite all of these challenges, Ingenuity ended up performing 72 flights, collectively traveling 11 miles and climbing up to 79 feet at the highest altitude.

The autonomous helicopter took to the skies for the first time on April 19, 2021. It arrived on the Red Planet attached to the underside of the Perseverance rover, which is still active on Mars’ surface. Ingenuity acted as a scout for the rover, checking out sites and collecting critical photo and video.

“Like the Wright brothers, Ingenuity has paved the way for future flight in our solar system, and its leading the way for smarter, safer human missions to Mars and beyond,” Nelson said.

Nelson said the agency is still investigating the possibility that the damaged blade struck the ground. Just last week, NASA experienced a two-day communications blackout with the little helicopter after it conducted what turned out to be its final flight.

Space startups are licking their lips after NASA converts $11B Mars mission into a free-for-all

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Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA administrator Bill Nelson has pronounced the agency’s $11 billion, 15-year mission to collect and return samples from Mars insufficient. But the strategy shift could be a huge boon to space startups, to which much of that planned funding will almost certainly be redirected.

“The bottom line is, an $11 billion budget is too expensive, and a 2040 return date is too far away,” Nelson said at a press conference. “We need to look outside the box to find a way ahead that is both affordable and returns samples in a reasonable timeframe.”

In other words, clear the decks and start over — with commercial providers on board from the get-go.

The Mars Sample Return mission was still in the planning stages, but an independent review of the project last year found that, given budget, technology and other constraints, the mission was unlikely to complete before 2040, and at a cost of $8 billion to $11 billion.

Though NASA proposed a revised plan in the mold of the original, it has now also challenged the space community to go further: “NASA soon will solicit architecture proposals from industry that could return samples in the 2030s, and lowers cost, risk, and mission complexity.”

Considering how heavily both primes and space startups have been investing in interplanetary capability, this announcement arguably amounts to a historic windfall. A company like Intuitive Machines, riding high after accomplishing the first private lunar landing, will almost certainly be firing on all cylinders to take on what could be a multi-billion-dollar contract.

Intuitive Machines makes history by landing the first commercial spacecraft on the moon

Even if NASA wants to assign only half or even a quarter of the original budget to an endeavor led by a commercial space company, private industry has already shown that it can do more with less when compared to legacy outfits.

It’s also catnip for launch companies, since the time horizon is far enough out that heavy launch vehicles like Blue Origin’s New Glenn, Rocket Lab’s Neutron and, of course, SpaceX’s Starship may be cleared to fly when the mission is ready to progress. That was undoubtedly also the plan with the 2040 timeline, but the notional new one is a lot closer to the present.

SpaceX makes significant progress with third Starship orbital test flight

Between the lines can be seen the admission that any mission planned before the present bloom of orbital and interplanetary capability is, very simply, no longer feasible. Although NASA’s troubled Space Launch System heavy launch vehicle is perhaps the largest such project, to abandon it now would be to throw away a great deal, while preemptively opting for a leaner Mars program fueled by commercial ambitions seems to have no obvious downside. (There’s plenty of time to save and repurpose the most important concepts and research already done by NASA and its partners.)

No doubt that many of the companies this decision stands to benefit — not just startups and growing space companies but also primes and launch providers — saw the writing on the wall and have been looking forward to this day. But the official announcement, and the implication that it is the new generation of space companies that will accomplish ambitious goals like a there-and-back trip to Mars, must be very validating.

To be clear, there is no money on the table just yet — but the promise has essentially been made that what would have belonged to the Mars Sample Return mission will be repurposed according to whatever new plan the expansive “NASA community” decides on. Whatever that new plan may be, it will almost certainly rely far more than before on commercial services and hardware.

Just as the Commercial Lunar Payload Services accelerated and incentivized the proliferation of vehicles, spacecraft and landers we see today — including some by companies that didn’t exist a few years ago — the newly recast Mars Sample Return mission may have fired the starting gun on commercial ambitions for the red planet.