Good day, and welcome again to TechCrunch Area. The remaining agenda for the Area Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt is dwell and we’d like to see you there. Come hear the newest and best insights from high house entrepreneurs and traders!
Need to attain out with a tip? E mail Aria at aria.techcrunch@gmail.com or ship a message on Sign at 512-937-3988. You may also ship a notice to the TechCrunch crew at suggestions@techcrunch.com. For safer communications, click on right here to contact us, which incorporates SecureDrop directions and hyperlinks to encrypted messaging apps.
Story of the week
This week I wished to spotlight a brand new startup that’s taking intention at a know-how that’s been studied for many years however by no means materialized: space-based solar energy.
Aetherflux, rising from stealth Wednesday, says it’s creating a novel design for space-based photo voltaic to unlock this vitality supply for the primary time. The startup was based by Baiju Bhatt, the co-founder of economic buying and selling platform Robinhood, who stated he got interested within the fast commercialization of house. “The thing that’s always been my interest is, how do you bring more capitalism to space?”
Scoop of the week
When you’re bullish on arduous tech as an investing class, then this will likely be excellent information: I realized this week that Interlagos, the enterprise capital agency began by former senior SpaceX leaders, is seeking to elevate $550 million for its first enterprise fund.
Potential LPs are little doubt drawn to the bona fides of the founding workforce, which incorporates Achal Upadhyaya, who was a senior engineer at SpaceX for a decade earlier than main investments in house and protection at Cantos Ventures; Tom Ochinero, a former high-ranking SpaceX govt who left the corporate in March after a 10-year stint; and Spencer Hemphill, Interlagos’ CFO, who was a former Sequoia finance chief.
This week in house historical past
This week in “women are awesome” information: 5 years in the past on October 18, NASA astronauts carried out the first-ever all girls spacewalk! Astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch ventured outdoors the Worldwide Area Station to switch a defective cost/discharge battery unit. This was Koch’s fourth spacewalk and the primary for Meir.
Meir dismissed the accomplishment on the time, telling then-president Donald Trump, “We don’t want to take too much credit because there have been many others — female spacewalkers — before us,” Houston Public Media reported on the time. “This is just the first time that there have been two women outside at the same time … For us, this is really just us doing our job.”
On the time, 15 girls had participated in 42 spacewalks, with cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya making the primary enterprise outdoors the station in 1984.
Right here’s some nice footage from the company exhibiting the spacewalk in motion.
