Category: UNCATEGORIZED

NASA and SpaceX have set a specific date and time target for their historic first astronaut launch aboard a private spacecraft from U.S. soil, with a planned date of May 27 and a target liftoff time of 4:32 PM EDT (1:32 PM PDT) from Kennedy Space Center, at SpaceX’s Launch Complex 39A (LC-39). The mission had been previously announced too be tracking towards a mid- to late-May launch timeframe, but now we know exactly when the agency and SpaceX hope to launch astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley for this inaugural trip to the International Space Station.

The launch is the first crewed mission in NASA’s Commercial Crew program, which seeks to return American launch capabilities to U.S. soil through private partnerships, with both SpaceX and Boeing taking part and developing their own separate launch vehicles and crew craft. SpaceX has taken all the steps necessary to get to this stage ahead of Boeing, and this flight, called Demo-2, while still technically part of the test program, will see NASA’s astronauts visit the space station for “an extended stay,” with a full duration yet to be determined.

This final test will validate each aspect of the Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 launch system, including the pad from which the rocket takes off, the operational facilities on the ground, orbital systems and astronauts procedures. Pending successful completion of all those elements, Crew Dragon should be set for full operational certification, after which time it can begin regularly scheduled service of reliving astronauts to and from the ISS.

For the mission, Crew Dragon will launch with Behnken and Hurley, then enter orbit and rendezvous with the ISS, which should occur around 24 hours after liftoff. The spacecraft is designed to dock fully autonomously with the station (and has done so on a previous occasion during an uncrewed demo mission) and then Behnken and Hurley will disembark and join as members of the ISS crew, performing research on the orbital science platform.

The Crew Dragon flying this mission is designed to stay on orbit for around 110 days, but its actual length of stay will be decided by how ready the commercial crew mission to follow is at the time of launch. That Crew Dragon, which is the fully operational version, is designed for stays of at least 210 days, and the crew complement of four astronauts, including three from NASA and one from Japan’s space agency, is already determined. If all goes well, it’ll happen sometime later this year.

Crew Dragon from Demo-2 will perform an automated undocking from the ISS with Behnken and Hurley on board when it is ready to leave, and then they’ll re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and have a controlled splashdown landing in the Atlantic Ocean, where a SpaceX ship will pick them up and bring them back to Florida.

Obviously, NASA and SpaceX are facing challenges along with everyone else with the global COVID-19 crisis ongoing, but the agency has taken extra precautions to ensure this mission continues, since NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine notes that continued U.S. access to, and presence within the ISS is critical.

Airbnb has ended its contracts with contingent workers early and postponed summer internships, Protocol reports. Contractors at Airbnb serve as property inspectors, home consultants and more.

Contractors will reportedly receive no less than two weeks’ pay after receiving notice from their temp agencies.

Airbnb will also reportedly delay hiring undergraduate students until next year. TechCrunch has since heard from an incoming intern that he was notified yesterday and that he’s now scrambling to find a new internship.

Airbnb is not the only tech company to cancel internships amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In March, Yelp canceled its summer internship and TC’s Natasha Mascarenhas has since learned StubHub, Glassdoor, Funding Circle and Checkr have also canceled their respective internships.

These personnel changes come just one day after Airbnb secured a $1 billion loan. Earlier this month, Airbnb raised an additional $1 billion in debt and equity.

TechCrunch has reached out to Airbnb and will update this story if we hear back.

Additional reporting by Natasha Mascarenhas. 

Spanish bank Santander has launched a new product called PagoFX. As the name suggests, PagoFX focuses on foreign exchange and lets you send money in other currencies. In other words, it’s a TransferWise competitor. It is completely separated from Satander’s retail bank products. You don’t need a Santander bank account.

While Santander puts its logo on the website of PagoFX, it looks more like a fintech startup website. PagoFX wants to help you save money on international transfers, acting as an intermediary step between a bank account in one currency and another bank account in another currency.

Traditional banks charge high fees for international transfers. Banks add a markup on the exchange rate, charge you exchange fees on top of that and sometimes charge you if you initiate transfers to a foreign bank account.

That’s why companies like TransferWise, WorldRemit, Azimo and Revolut have been thriving. You send money to their bank account first or you use a debit card. Then they take care of exchanging money and sending it again to your recipient.

PagoFX promises simple and transparent fees combined with the Santander brand. The company’s product is currently live in the U.K., but PagoFX already has plans to expand to other European countries. You can send money to the Eurozone, the U.S., Poland, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the Czech Republic.

After downloading the app and verifying your identity, you send money by associating your debit card with your account and adding the IBAN account information of your recipient. PagoFX charges 0.7% on most transfers and 0.8% on transfers to the U.S., Poland and Denmark. PagoFX is waving fees up to £3,000 for the first couple of months.

TransferWise lets you choose between low cost transfers and “fast and easy” transfers. The latter option also leverages your debit card to speed up the process. If we compare the fast and easy fee with PagoFX, here’s what it looks like.

• For a £1,000 transfer, your recipient gets €1,148.50 with PagoFX, €1,140.82 with TransferWise. After PagoFX stops waving fees, your recipient will get €1,140.46.
• For a £5,000 transfer, your recipient gets €5,726.92 with PagoFX, €5,705.25 with TransferWise. After PagoFX stops waving fees, your recipient will get €5,710.88.
• For a £10,000 transfer, your recipient gets €11,426.73 with PagoFX, €11,410.82 with TransferWise. After PagoFX stops waving fees, your recipient will get €11,370.74.

PagoFX is particularly cheap right now because of the current promotion on fees. After that, it’ll depend on how much you plan on sending. But don’t forget that TransferWise has a slower and cheaper option if you’re willing to wait another day and transfer money to TransferWise from your bank account first.

The Europas Awards for European Tech Startups is doing what everyone in tech has done before: pivoting! Given the COVID-19 pandemic, we will be ‘going virtual’ on an amazing new platform, to be unveiled. (OK, but not VR – just yet!). A percentage of proceeds from the event will be donated to charities across Europe helping to fight the pandemic.

Judging will be entirely virtual and the Awards themselves will be announced live on 25th June at an online event which will feature special guests, and live entertainment — so we can party!. All long-listed companies in the People’s Vote will be showcased on TechCrunch.

Of key interest to startups short-listed in the awards will be the opportunity to attend over 20 workshops built around the awards categories, to which investors will be invited. That’s 20+hours of programming. Shortlisted companies will be able to pitch live on the platform, with slides. IN addition the “Pathfounder Sessions” will offer exclusive workshops with specially invited guests, aimed at European startups raising money at this time.

If you’d like to talk about sponsoring, please contact Claire Dobson on claire@thepathfounder.com. Sponsors will be able to attend and participate in workshops.

The application form to enter is here.

NEW CLOSING DATE FOR APPLICATIONS: 24 April 2020

Our new platform will even allow everyone to network virtually and easily exchange contact details, just as you would at a real-world event.

Our virtual attendees will be limited to only 500 people, and will include only Investors, Founders and Senior Executives of mid to late-stage companies as well as some of the newest companies on the scene.

The Europas is always attended by journalists from major tech titles, newspapers and business broadcasters, and will still be.

The initial long-list will draw from late-stage seed and Series A companies tackling these ambitious goals with proven product-market fit and growing traction who have been carefully scouted and invited to apply.

We are delighted to unveil our judges for the awards, listed below.

The Awards — which have been running for over 10 years — will be live held on the evening of 25 June 2020 from the London time zone.

TechCrunch is once more the exclusive media sponsor of the awards and conference, alongside The Pathfounder.

We’re scouting for the top late-stage seed and Series A startups in 23 categories. After a decade of identifying the most innovative tech startups in Europe including Spotify, Transferwise, Soundcloud, and Babylon Health, The Europas has shown itself capable of finding Europe’s hottest startups. The Europas Awards have been going for the last 10 years, and we’re the only independent and editorially driven event to recognise the European tech startup scene. The winners have been featured in Reuters, Bloomberg, VentureBeat, Forbes, Tech.eu, The Memo, Smart Company, CNET, many others — and of course, TechCrunch.

You can nominate a startup, accelerator or venture investor that you think deserves to be recognized for their achievements in the last 12 months. This year we are particularly looking at startups that are able to address the SDGs/Globals Goals.

Timeline of The Europas Awards deadlines:

24 April___________Final deadline to submit applications
27 April___________All startups notified of longlist
04 May_____________Public voting begins
17 May_____________Public voting ends
25 May_____________Shortlist announced
26 May – 16 June___Awards Category Deep Dives + Pitches
17- 23 June________Pathfounder Workshops
25 June____________Winners announced / Virtual Awards

The Pathfounder Workshops
Prior to the awards we will be holding special, premium content events The Pathfounder, designed be a “fast download” into the European tech scene for founders looking to raise money or enhance their business. This will be followed by the awards!

The Europas “Diversity Pass”
We’d like to encourage more diversity in tech! That’s why we’ve set aside a block of free tickets to ensure that pre-seed female and BAME founders are represented at The Europas. This limited tranche of free tickets ensures that we include more women and people of colour who are specifically “pre-seed” or “seed-stage” tech startup founders. If you are a women/BAME founder, apply here for a chance to be considered for one of the limited free diversity passes to the event.

Lastly, remember: stay home, stay safe!

Meet our speakers and judges:

Anne Boden
CEO
Starling Bank
Anne Boden is founder and CEO of Starling Bank, a fast-growing U.K. digital bank targeting millions of users who live their lives on their phones. After a distinguished career in senior leadership at some of the world’s best-known financial heavyweights, she set out to build her own mobile bank from scratch in 2014. Today, Starling has opened more than one million current accounts for individuals and small businesses and raised hundreds of millions of pounds in backing. Anne was awarded an MBE for services to financial technology in 2018.

Bernhard Niesner
CEO and c-founder
busuu
Bernhard co-founded busuu in 2008 following an MBA project and has since led the company to become the world’s largest community for language learning, with more than 90 million users across the globe. Before starting busuu, Bernhard worked as a consultant at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. He graduated summa cum laude in International Business from the Vienna University of Economics and Business and holds an MBA with honours from IE Business School. Bernhard is an active mentor and business angel in the startup community and an advisor to the Austrian Government on education affairs. Bernhard recently received the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2018 UK Awards in the Disruptor category.

Chris Morton
CEO and founder
Lyst
Chris is the founder and CEO of Lyst, the world’s biggest fashion search platform used by 104 million shoppers each year. Including over 6 million products from brands including Burberry, Fendi, Gucci, Prada and Saint Laurent, Lyst offers shoppers convenience and unparalleled choice in one place. Launched in London in 2010, Lyst’s investors include LVMH, 14W, Balderton and Accel Partners. Prior to founding Lyst, Chris was an investor at Benchmark Capital and Balderton Capital in London, focusing on the early-stage consumer internet space. He holds an MA in physics and philosophy from Cambridge University.

Claire Novorol
Co-Founder & Chief Medical Officer
Ada Health
Dr. Claire Novorol is Chief Medical Officer and co-founder of Ada Health. Prior to founding Ada, Claire worked as a Paediatrician within the NHS before specialising in Clinical Genetics. She has degrees in Pathology and Medicine as well as a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Cambridge. Claire is also the founder of Doctorpreneurs, a global community for healthcare professionals interested in innovation and entrepreneurship. She is a member of the Advisory Team Steering Group for the AHSN Network Community for Artificial Intelligence, an Entrepreneurship Expert with the Entrepreneurship Centre at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford and a member of the UK Digital Health Council. In 2018, Claire was featured on Business Insider’s Tech 100: The 100 coolest people in UK tech and Forbes’ Europe’s Top 50 Women in Tech, and she is a regular contributor to Forbes, writing on healthtech.

Clare Jones
Chief Commercial Officer
what3words
Clare is the chief commercial officer of what3words; prior to this, her background was in the development and growth of social enterprises and in impact investment. Clare was featured in the 2019 Forbes 30 under 30 list for technology and is involved with London companies tackling social/environmental challenges. Clare also volunteers with the Streetlink project, doing health outreach work with vulnerable women in South London.

Emily Orton
Co-founder & Chief Marketing Officer
Darktrace
Emily is responsible for global marketing and communications, a role she has held since Darktrace’s foundation in 2013. She is also a commentator on cyber security issues and has appeared in leading media outlets including BBC News, Sky News and Channel 4. Emily has ten years’ experience in technology marketing. She has an MA in Modern Languages from the University of Cambridge.

Husayn Kassai
CEO and co-founder
Onfido
Husayn Kassai is the Onfido CEO and co-founder. Onfido helps businesses digitally onboard users by verifying any government ID and comparing it with the person’s facial biometrics. Founded in 2012, Onfido has grown to a team of 300 across SF, NYC and London; received over $100 million in funding from Salesforce, Microsoft and others; and works with over 1,500 fintech, banking and marketplace clients globally. Husayn is a WEF Tech Pioneer; a Forbes Contributor; and Forbes’ “30 Under 30”. He has a BA in economics and management from Keble College, Oxford.

Julia Hawkins
Partner
LocalGlobe
Julia Hawkins is a Partner at LocalGlobe. Previously, Julia worked at Goldman Sachs, Last.fm, BBC Worldwide and most recently Universal Music where she set up their Corporate Venture arm and led investments in ROLI and Sofar Sounds among others. Julia enjoys working with mission driven founders and has a keen interest in consumer, entertainment, media and health tech from wellness to genomics. She holds a 1st from LSE, is a Kauffman Fellow and Board Trustee of Shwachman Diamond Syndrome UK, a charity dedicated to finding a cure for SDS, a rare genetic disease.

Kieran O’Neill
CEO and co-founder
Thread
Thread makes it easy for guys to dress well. They combine expert stylists with powerful AI to recommend the perfect clothes for each person. Thread is used by more than 1 million men in the U.K., and has raised $35 million from top investors, including Balderton Capital, the founders of DeepMind and the billionaire former owner of Warner Music. Prior to Thread, Kieran founded one of the first video sharing websites at age 15 and sold it for $1.25 million at age 19. He was then CEO and co-founder of Playfire, the largest social network for gamers, which he grew to 1.5 million customers before being acquired in 2012. He’s a member of the Forbes, Drapers and Financial Times 30 Under 30 lists.

Lina Wenner
Principal
Firstminute Capital
Lina joined firstminute from the Boston Consulting Group, where she worked alongside global corporates across Consumer, Energy and Heavy Industrials, advising on digital strategy, restructuring and M&A as a member of the corporate finance team. She gained an MPhil in Management from the University of Cambridge and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, Economics and Statistics from the University College Utrecht, the Netherlands, where she graduated with Summa Cum Laude. At firstminute, Lina leads on sourcing for the Nordic and German-speaking regions and has a strong interest in digital health, robotics, direct-to-consumer brands and femtech. ​She sits as a board ​observer of Evolution AI.

Luca Bocchio
Principal
Accel
Luca Bocchio joined Accel in 2018 and focuses on consumer internet, fintech and software businesses. Luca led Accel’s investment in Luko, Bryter and Brumbrum. Luca also helped lead Accel’s investment and ongoing work in Sennder. Prior to Accel, Luca was with H14, where he invested in global early and growth-stage opportunities, such as Deliveroo, GetYourGuide, Flixbus, SumUp and SecretEscapes. Luca previously advised technology, industrial and consumer companies on strategy with Bain & Co. in Europe and Asia. Luca is from Italy and graduated from LIUC University.

Nate Lanxon (Speaker)
Editor and Tech Correspondent
Bloomberg
Nate is an editor and tech correspondent for Bloomberg, based in London. For over a decade, he has particularly focused on the consumer technology sector, and the trends shaping the global industry. Previous to this, he was senior editor at Bloomberg Media and was head of digital editorial for Bloomberg.com in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Nate has held numerous roles across the most respected titles in tech, including stints as editor of WIRED.co.uk, editor-in-chief of Ars Technica UK and senior editor at CBS-owned CNET. Nate launched his professional career as a journalist by founding a small tech and gaming website called Tech’s Message, which is now the name of his weekly technology podcast hosted at natelanxon.com.

Tania Boler
CEO and founder
Elvie
Tania is an internationally recognized women’s health expert and has held leadership positions for various global NGOs and the United Nations. Passionate about challenging taboo women’s issues, Tania founded Elvie in 2013, partnering with Alexander Asseily to create a global hub of connected health and lifestyle products for women.

Holly Jacobus
Investment Partner
Joyance Partners, New York
Holly Jacobus is an Investment Partner with Joyance Partners, investing in companies with the capacity to deliver Delightful Moments in US and EU. Her focus is new foods, consumer packaged goods, sexual wellness, femtech, farmtech and earth-positive manufacturing methods. Holly spent her career growing startups through early stage sales and PR, most recently as the Chief Revenue Officer at Citia, a NYC based global content creation, storage and distribution platform servicing Fortune 500 brands including GE (global), Mastercard (US), Viacom (global), and P&G (global). Holly was raised on a farm in California where she became the first graduate of Stanford University’s online high school (EPGY OHS) and an Academic All American Volleyball Player. She later studied bioengineering at UC Berkeley and French at Georgetown University where she played D1 Volleyball. When Holly isn’t investing or helping companies scale, you can find her backpacking the Sierra Nevadas or skiing the Tetons with her dog Smoky. Recent investments include: Unbound, WholyMe, TeaCrush, Finless Foods, Loli, MushLab, Weller, & Sigrid Therapeutics.

Vox Media is making a number of cutbacks in response to the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition to Vox itself, the digital media company owns properties including Curbed, Eater, Recode, SB Nation and The Verge — and it acquired New York Magazine last year.

In a staff memo obtained by TechCrunch (and others), CEO Jim Bankoff outlined several cost-cutting measures — but no outright layoffs.

The measures including furloughing 9% of employees from May 1 to July 31. Bankoff said this will include some employees in sales, sales support, production, events, IT and office operations, along with editorial staff at SB Nation and Curbed. He also said affected employees will retain their company health insurance during this period.

In addition, the company is freezing wages through the end of 2020, pausing its 401K match, reducing hours for 1% of employees and cutting salaries during the same three-month furlough period for employees making more than $130,000 per year — the cuts start at 15%, with Bankoff and Vox Media President Pam Wasserstein taking a 50% salary reduction.

In explaining the layoffs, Bankoff pointed to the broader economic collapse caused by the pandemic, with the dramatic reduction in ad spending, which has led many other media companies to announce layoffs and/or salary reductions.

Bankoff wrote:

We’ve already seen a decline in our business. Weakness in March, driven by the cancellations of SXSW and March Madness, the collapse of travel, sports and fashion-related advertising, and other factors led us to miss our revenue goals by several million dollars in the first quarter; the impact will be significantly greater in the second quarter. While expressing the severity of this decline, it’s also important to know that we will rebound. We don’t know when or to what extent a rebound will occur. I’d be overjoyed if it happened quickly, but we cannot bet our company on these hopes.

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

Yesterday news broke that Robinhood is on the hunt for new capital at a roughly flat valuation, per friend of the blog Katie Roof. If you are a bit confused by the news, I understand. Robinhood went through a gauntlet of bad press and user complaints after it suffered from some embarrassing downtime back in March, and isn’t the capital market for private companies in rough shape?

But the round is more reasonable than you’d think, namely because Robinhood’s revenue has reached real scale, and, like other savings and investing-focused financial applications, it’s enjoying a boom in demand. Showing that there’s buzz in helping people save, let’s talk about Robinhood briefly and dig into some other metrics from its loose cohort of companies (including M1 Finance, more about them in a moment) .

Growth

One of the largest COVID-19 vaccine trials currently underway will have over 500 volunteers actively testing its solution by the middle of next month. Researchers at the University of Oxford have already secured that number of participants, including a representative sample of people between the ages of 18 to 55, for a large-scale randomized clinical early and mid-stage trial of its potential vaccine, which uses a harmless, modified virus to trigger an immune response that is also effective against the novel coronavirus.

The trial will divide a total of 510 participant sent five groups, with one group receiving a follow-up, booster shot of the vaccine after the original does. The technology behind the vaccine has already been used in developing about 10 different other treatments, but will require an approach that includes setting up different test groups in different countries to ensure representative results, since infection rates are varying greatly place to place with prevention measures in place, study lead Sarah Gilbert told Bloomberg.

The team behind the vaccine is also still seeking additional funding to help scale manufacturing, since it aims to begin producing it in volume following the six month period this human trial phase will span. The goal is to have mass production up and running by this fall, under the assumption that the trial proves the potential vaccine effective, with a final stage trial of 5,000 people and the potential to begin providing some doses for use by frontline healthcare workers by as early as September.

The Oxford trial is one of just a handful that have progressed to the human testing phase, but more are coming online all the time. Existing clinical human trials from Moderna and Inovio are underway in the U.S., and those have also expressed the potential for earlier access for emergency use prior to broad rollout following the initial clinical results.

Even if there is some availability by fall of some of these vaccine candidates (and that assumes they even prove effective), that doesn’t mean they’ll be broadly available: That will still require further testing, and scaling manufacturing, as well as working out distribution and administration – all processes that will add months of work. Already, however, the unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in new efficiencies in the development process, and more could follow in these extraordinary times.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week the Key Three were back with Danny Crichton, Natasha Mascarenhas, and Alex Wilhelm taking on the news while Chris Gates kept everything perfect.

Alex apologizes for the math error you’ll hear, naturally. 36 divided by four, is, of course, nine.

Turning to the show, as has been the case every single week since we cannot recall when, we had a hell of a packed agenda.; there were new funds to talk about, there were rounds aplenty. As the unicorn era hands the baton to the COVID-19 downturn, there still more than we can get through each week.

But we did manage all that follows:

• Lightspeed raised a host of new funds worth billions of dollars, including $1.83 billion in capital for later-stage deals and $1.5 billion to pour more capital into its international investments.
• Andreessen Horowitz wants to put together a second crypto-focused fund worth $450 million. That’s more than last time, and we had questions.
• Corigin Ventures raised its first institutional fund at $36 million, effectively stepping out of complete control from its parent organization, Corigin Real Estate.
• Stripe raised $600 million more, at a flat valuation to its preceding round. The payments company is now worth around $36 billion. The news dropped out of nowhere, and probably means that the eventual Stripe IPO is far, far away.
• Robinhood is raising new capital, which caught our eye.
• Carta, which helps manage equity for startups, laid off 16 percent of its staff as detailed in an emotional memo by the company’s CEO Henry Ward. Then, the plot thickened when news broke that it’s raising a new round of funding that would value it at $3 billion.
• Lucid and Everee, two Utah-based companies raised capital this week, right after we saw Podium raise the week before. $52 million for Lucid, makers of Lucidchart, and $10 million fo Everee, a payroll software startup with a fun twist.
• But we weren’t done yet, as we had to talk about Airbnb’s new debt work; Danny made the point that it’s hardly cheap capital for the firm to raise, possibly adding pressure to Airbnb later on. This is another company that will not go public in 2020.
• Savi raised $6 million to help students pay student loans, while Frank raised $5 million to help students avoid racking them up.
• Despite tight school budgets, Labster landed a deal with the California Community Colleges which tells us a bit about how edtech optimism is turning into actual dollars.

And, breathing out, that was the show. Thanks for sticking with us through the pandemic and not having a commute. It’s a treat to have you here.

Codementor, an online education platform for software developers, is launching Code Against COVID-19 to match volunteers with software projects to fight the pandemic. The initiative, which Codementor is not making money from, wants to connect coders with universities, non-profits, local government agencies and other organizations.

Some of the programs Code Against COVID-19 is currently working with include Safe Paths and Covid Watch, both of which are developing tools to stop the spread of COVID-19 while safeguarding personal privacy. It has also connected developers to grassroots projects like Hospital@home and a UX designer working on a geofencing app to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Codementor’s platform includes hundreds of thousands of developers around the world. After seeing that many organizations and government agencies needed coders to work on COVID-19-related software, Codementor surveyed its community. Founder and CEO Weiting Liu said 98% of respondents said they were willing to donate their skills, and Code Against COVID-19 was created to quickly match coders to projects.

So far, more than 200 developers have signed up to work for free or, for longer-term projects, at a discount.

Liu is from Taiwan, which despite its close proximity to China has managed to prevent a major outbreak of COVID-19 without lockdowns.

Liu told TechCrunch that Codementor’s team was inspired by the success of software projects lead by the country’s Digital Minister Audrey Tang, including a citywide alert system in Taipei and maps that let users track the real-time inventory of rationed masks at nearby pharmacies to avoid waiting in long lines.

“If you believe software can change the world, this is a perfect example,” Liu said, adding that Codementor’s Taiwan-based team members want to help other countries. “We’re fortunate with the situation in Taiwan, we’re not locked down at home with our kids, we’re relatively safe, so we can just try to help the community.”

Other developer volunteer programs include Coding Dojo’s Tech for America, which is providing web development support to small businesses, and Help with COVID.

A demonstration mission of Northrop Grumman’s first-ever Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV-1) has proven successful, extending the life of an Intelsat satellite by five years. The mission involved Northrop’s MEV docking with Intelsat’s IS-901 satellite in orbit on February 25, after which it altered the orbit of the Intelsat spacecraft to bury it more operating time.

While the original docking occurred in late February, the MEV has spent the intervening time altering the orbit of IS-901, and Intelsat has since also transitioned some of its customers to the previously inactive satellite for use of its communication services. It’s now providing “full service,” the companies announced, and will continue to do so for another five years, before the MEV returns it to its decommissioned orbit for final retirement. At that time, MEV-1 will become available again for other space tug missions, able to perform the same service for another satellite.

This is a big step in terms of orbital sustainability and in-space servicing and life extension, particular for Northrop Grumman, which can now offer this as a service. For Intelsat, the company sees it as a “cost-effective and efficient way” to continue to offer uninterrupted service and address customer needs without requiring building and launching an entirely new satellite, the release notes.

There’s been a shift in the industry away from large, geosynchronous satellites to fleets of small, agile low-Earth orbit smallsats, owing to cost considerations. Orbital servicing could help provide another option, but for now it’s likely to appeal more to legacy space industry satellite operators than to the newer constellation startups.

Northrop is planning a second MEV spacecraft to launch to service another Intelsat satellite later this year, however, so it does look like it could be a market in the near-term, and it could change the economics of larger spacecraft in future, too.