Hi everyone,
This quarter was another exciting and challenging one for the industry at large. Lots of activity on the moon, another Starship launch and amazing science results such as the magnetic field imaging of black hole Sag A* shown above.
Macro & Market
This quarter was a great showreel of 'space is hard' examples. The 3 lunar lander missions all had issues (Astrobotic's Peregrine never left Earth orbit, JAXA's SLIM lost one of its thrusters and crashed on its side and the Intuitive Machines lander fell over after landing). The Chinese space agency also lost several spacecraft that launched for different lunar orbiting missions.
From left to right: Astrobotic Peregrine before burning up in Earth's atmosphere, JAXA's SLIM on its side and Intuitive Machines' IM-1 falling over
That said, we don't believe these missions just prove that space is hard (although we are glad that we're going to asteroids and not to the moon....) but rather that the feedback loops for space missions are broken. Very few companies discuss their anomaly reports and learnings, be it from design and hardware selection or from testing and qualification. Everyone is bound by NDAs or feels that they are, to the point where the same failures show up across different companies and missions.
The public and fairly detailed disclosure of what went wrong, why it went wrong and what they learned from it that both JAXA and these 2 space companies showed will be helpful for everyone else in the industry and sets an example that we believe is the only way to really get better at something. With new missions coming up for all 3, these learnings will certainly help them but will also benefit the broader industry.
On a more positive note, Starship launched for the 3rd time with a significant improvement in terms of performance on all metrics that reinforces the importance of a feedback loop. And they also managed to capture amazing footage throughout the flight!
