In this week’s Launch Roundup, a new crew led by a veteran astronaut on his fourth spaceflight arrived at China’s Tiangong space station for a six-month mission on Tuesday (May 30).

A software glitch and a change in destination combined to cause ispace’s commercial HAKUTO-R lunar lander to crash into the Moon last month as it attempted a soft landing on the surface on April 26, according to new details shared by the company on Thursday (May 26).

Welcome to Biz Briefs. Inmarsat orders three small GEO satellites, the European Commission approves Inmarsat’s merger with Viasat, Maritime Launch Services signs a multi-mission agreement, Fleet Space and GITAI raise funds, China and Europe eye commercial cargo services, and other industry news.

Mojave, California-based Stratolaunch will use the Boeing 747 that it is acquiring from bankrupt Virgin Orbit to double its fleet of aircraft dedicated to conducting flight tests of hypersonic vehicles, the company said on Thursday (May 25).

With a successful flight on Thursday (May 25), Virgin Galactic (NYSE: SPCE) completed SpaceShipTwo’s 13-year-long flight test program, paving the way for the start of commercial suborbital crewed flights in late June.

Welcome to S-SPACⁱ. This week, we say goodbye to Virgin Orbit, sister company Virgin Galactic prepares for its first launch in nearly two years, BlackSky and Spire Global team up to track ships, AST SpaceMobile will join two Russell indexes, Planet Labs announces two artificial intelligence partnerships, Redwire wins a contract to develop a 3D bioprinter, and SatixFy’s beam-hopping communications system is launched into orbit.

Rocket Lab said on Tuesday that it will use the manufacturing facility and equipment it acquired from bankrupt Virgin Orbit to accelerate the development of its new Neutron rocket. The company has no plans to integrate Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket into its line of launch vehicles, however, indicating the booster will likely never fly again.

The Spaceport Company announced that it launched four sounding rockets from a floating platform in the Gulf of Mexico on Monday, marking the first time commercial boosters have been launched from US territorial waters.

Richard Branson’s bankrupt launch provider Virgin Orbit (OTCMKTS: VORBQ), which spent more than $1 billion developing the capability to launch satellites from a Boeing 747 jumbo jet, auctioned off its assets to Rocket Lab, Launcher, Stratolaunch, and a fourth company called INLIPER for just under $36.5 million on Monday, according to a court filing.

In this week’s Launch Roundup, the SpaceX Crew Dragon Freedom spacecraft docked at the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday (May 22), bringing four astronauts on Axiom Space’s second private mission to the orbiting facility. Former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson commands the eight-day Ax-2 mission, which was launched by a Falcon 9 rocket on Sunday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

SpaceX has filed a motion in US Federal District Court to intervene as a defendant in a lawsuit that environmental groups filed against the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in an attempt to void the agency’s approval for the company to launch Starship/Super Heavy rockets from Boca Chica, Texas.

SpaceX launched Axiom Space’s second private mission to the International Space Station on Sunday (May 22), which included two Americans and a pair of Saudi astronauts, including the first female astronaut from the kingdom.