Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. I hope everyone had a great time at the Space Symposium! Hope to see you there next year.

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The Space Force has contracted for its next “responsive space” mission, and it's a dodgy one. The two award winners, RocketLab and startup True Anomaly, will each build and launch spacecraft that will perform orbital rendezvous and proximity operations.

In the words of the Space Force: “Vendors will use a realistic threat response scenario in an on-orbit space domain awareness demonstration called Victus Haze.”

Both companies will also have to work under a deliberately tight time frame – Firefly Aerospace and Millennium Space's first manned space mission. New records set In terms of launch preparation – so we'll certainly be following the mission closely when it launches next year.

Image credit: Sam Tomes and Simon Moffat

SpaceX's confidential financial statements for 2018 and 2019 provide an early glimpse of the degree to which the company likely depends on its Starlink business unit, and bringing the Starship rocket online, to become cash-flow positive.

While the comprehensive balance sheets are five years old, they provide a deep look inside the operations of one of America's most important, and secretive, private companies.

Image credit: Michael Gonzalez/Getty Images

I was very interested to see this Bloomberg reporting on Starlink's profitability – or not. This is a really nice complement to my scope above: the two stories together tell a story about the importance of Starlink to the company's long-term, and quite ambitious, plan to colonize Mars. .

How much is too much? Starlink dishes in a line on a celebrity cruise ship. Image credit: Celebrity Walk

Houston, we have a problem…

This week's space history segment is dedicated to the Apollo 13 mission, which launched on April 11 and returned to Earth on April 17. A three-person crew was slated for the Moon, but those plans were quickly scrapped when an oxygen tank in the service module exploded two days after launch.

The prime recovery ship for the Apollo 13 mission hoists the on-board command module. Image credit: NASA/Getty Images