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Blue Origin aces rocket reuse, but satellite goes awry

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket rises from its Florida pad
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket rises from its Florida pad, sending an AST SpaceMobile satellite into space. (Blue Origin via YouTube)

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture used a previously flown New Glenn rocket booster to send a satellite into space today, marking a first for the company.

It was also New Glenn’s first launch failure.

The first-stage booster — nicknamed “Never Tell Me the Odds” — made its second successful touchdown on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean, drawing cheers from the Blue Origin team. But hours later, AST SpaceMobile said that its BlueBird 7 satellite was not deployed into its intended orbit.

“BlueBird 7 was placed into a lower than planned orbit by the upper stage of the launch vehicle,” the Texas-based company said in a news release. “While the satellite separated from the launch vehicle and powered on, the altitude is too low to sustain operations with its onboard thruster technology and will [be] deorbited. The cost of the satellite is expected to be recovered under the company’s insurance policy.”

The rocket lifted off from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 7:25 a.m. ET (4:25 a.m. PT). The twice-used booster made its first flight last November when it launched NASA’s Escapade probes on a mission to Mars. Blue Origin’s Florida team recovered and refurbished the booster for today’s launch.

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Muon detectives share the Breakthrough Prize glory

David Hertzog with muon storage ring at Fermilab
University of Washington physicist David Hertzog checks out the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab in 2018. (Photo Courtesy of David Hertzog)

University of Washington physicist David Hertzog can’t wait to find out how hundreds of researchers who worked on a geeky project known as the Muon g-2 Collaboration will react when they hear they’ve each won thousands of dollars for that work.

The money is coming from this year’s $3 million Breakthrough Prize for fundamental physics, which was awarded tonight during a gala ceremony in Los Angeles. Hertzog and his colleagues decided that the prize should be divided equally among everyone who was an author on research papers relating to the decades-long series of muon experiments.

“There are students who were in and out of this thing — two years or less,” he said. “They’re going to be shocked out of their lives about something they did a long time ago that they don’t remember doing. They’re going to get a phone call or email from the Breakthrough people, and they’re going to go, ‘What!?’ That’s kind of fun.”

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Quantum computing gets its day in the spotlight

Facade of IonQ's quantum computer factory in Bothell, Wash.
Washington state funding will support the expansion of IonQ's quantum computer factory in Bothell, Wash. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

Leaders of the Pacific Northwest’s computing community gathered in downtown Seattle today to mark World Quantum Day — and Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson gave them one more reason to celebrate. Or rather, 500,000 reasons.

Ferguson took the occasion to announce that $500,000 would be directed from the Governor’s Economic Development Strategic Reserve Fund to support the expansion of IonQ’s quantum computer manufacturing facility in Bothell, Wash. The 100,000-square-foot factory opened in 2024 and is ramping up production.

Over the next 18 months, Maryland-based IonQ plans to add about 100 engineering positions in Bothell, paying an average salary of $177,000. Over the next five years, the expansion is projected to generate between 1,200 and 2,000 regional jobs.

The Strategic Reserve Fund makes use of unclaimed lottery prize money for investments that deliver significant job creation and capital investment in Washington state. The newly announced award will go to the Economic Alliance of Snohomish County for building upgrades, workforce expenses and other expansion costs.

The state’s funding is coming on top of more than $14 million in private investment. “Quantum is the future, and it’s being built here,” Ferguson said in a news release.

The news was greeted with applause at Northwest Quantum Day, an all-day conference presented by Northwest Quantum Nexus and co-hosted by K&L Gates.

April 14 is marked as World Quantum Day for a geeky reason: The date (4/14) commemorates one of the foundational numbers of quantum mechanics, Planck’s constant (4.14 X 10-15 eV ⋅ s).

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Cosmic Space

Here’s what ‘moon joy’ looks like on planet Earth

Artemis 2 crew with Orion space capsule on recovery ship
Artemis 2 astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, Jeremy Hansen and Victor Glover strike a pose in front of their Orion spacecraft on the USS John P. Murtha, which served as the main recovery ship for their splashdown. (NASA Photo / Bill Ingalls)

While the astronauts of NASA’s Artemis 2 mission were in the midst of humanity’s first trip around the moon in 53 years, the mission’s lead lunar scientist said “moon joy” was her team’s new motto.

Now that the crew members are back on Earth, they’re reveling in moon joy — and reflecting on the wider meaning of their mission.

Astronaut Christina Koch told the audience at today’s homecoming celebration, held at Ellington Airport near NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, that she was once asked what defines a crew.

“A crew is inescapably, beautifully, dutifully linked,” she said. “So, when we saw tiny Earth, people asked our crew what impressions we had. And honestly, what struck me wasn’t necessarily just Earth. It was all the blackness around it. Earth was just this lifeboat, hanging undisturbingly in the universe. … I know I haven’t learned everything that this journey has yet to teach me, but there’s one new thing I know, and that is: Planet Earth, you are a crew.”

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Round-the-moon mission ends with a triumphant splash

Aerial view of Orion spacecraft splashing into the Pacific Ocean beneath parachutes
NASA’s Orion spacecraft splashes into the Pacific Ocean, as seen in an overhead view. (NASA via YouTube)

Four astronauts and their Orion space capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean today, bringing the first crewed trip around the moon and back since 1972 to a successful end.

“What a journey!” mission commander Reid Wiseman said moments after splashdown.

During their 10-day odyssey, the crew of NASA’s Artemis 2 mission — Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — became the most distant human travelers in history, swinging more than 4,000 miles past the moon’s far side. Koch is the first woman to venture beyond Earth orbit, Glover is the first Black astronaut to do so, and Hansen is the first non-U.S. astronaut to make such a trip.

The flight tested the Artemis program’s hardware and procedures to prepare the way for sending astronauts all the way to the lunar surface by as early as 2028, and for building a lunar base in the 2030s.

“It’s the most important human spaceflight mission I think we’ve done in many decades, in terms of what it meant historically, but also what it means for the future of the agency,” NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said at a post-splashdown news conference.

Orion’s hardware — including components built in the Seattle area — came through when it counted. Two sets of thrusters for Orion were built by L3Harris’ Aerojet Rocketdyne team in Redmond, Wash., while mechanisms that were made by Karman Space & Defense in Mukilteo, Wash., facilitated the safe deployment of Orion’s parachutes in the mission’s final minutes.

NASA calculated that Orion traveled 700,237 miles in all, from its launch atop a massive Space Launch System rocket on April 1 to its splashdown off the coast of California at 5:07 p.m. PT.

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Artemis 2’s trip around the moon enters the home stretch

Image from Orion: Engine and thrusters in foreground, Earth in background
A view from one of Orion's cameras shows the spacecraft's engines in the foreground and Earth in the background. (NASA via YouTube)

The crew of NASA’s round-the-moon test mission crossed the halfway point between the moon and Earth today on their homeward journey — and they’re picking up speed as they zero in on a spot off the coast of California for a live-streamed splashdown on April 10.

At the end of what so far has been a successful Artemis 2 mission, the astronauts are counting on the Orion space capsule’s propulsion system, heat shield and parachutes to work perfectly.

“We’re going to come into the atmosphere at almost 40 times the speed of sound, and then we will slow down to a 20-mile-an-hour touchdown into the Pacific,” NASA pilot Victor Glover told members of Congress today during a space-to-ground Q&A. “The heat shield and the parachutes are going to get us nice and slow. … We can’t wait to see the dive team and the Navy that are going to pick us up.”

Glover and his crewmates — mission commander Reid Wiseman, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — have been testing Orion’s systems during a mission aimed at preparing the way for a lunar landing that could take place as early as 2028. Their 10-day trip is the first time humans have gone around the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.

Artemis 2 lead flight director Jeff Radigan was asked during a news briefing how Orion’s entry and descent would compare with the “Seven Minutes of Terror” experienced by NASA’s Curiosity rover during its 2012 Mars landing.

“It’s 13 minutes of things that have to go right,” said Radigan, referring to the time period between the start of atmospheric entry and splashdown. Then he amended his remarks. “It’s not 13 minutes,” he said. “It’s an hour and a half of things that have to go right.”

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Portal Space gets a $50M boost for faster space mobility

Illustration: Portal's Starburst and Supernova vehicles in Earth orbit
An artist's conception shows Portal’s Starburst and Supernova spacecraft in Earth orbit. (Portal Space Systems Illustration)

Bothell, Wash.-based Portal Space Systems has raised $50 million in a funding round aimed at speeding up development of the Seattle-area startup’s highly maneuverable space vehicles.

The first such vehicle, Starburst-1, is due for launch as early as this fall as a payload on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 satellite rideshare mission. Portal is also getting ready to move into a 52,000-square-foot manufacturing facility where future Starburst spacecraft and even more capable Supernova space vehicles will be built.

Portal CEO Jeff Thornburg — who co-founded the company in 2021 following stints at tech ventures including SpaceX and Stratolaunch Systems — characterized the newly announced Series A funding round as closer to a giant leap than a small step.

“The thing that’s exciting me the most, and really the company at large, is that it helps us move faster,” he told me. “We’re obviously focused on getting Starburst and Supernova capabilities demonstrated and available to our customers as quickly as we can.”

The round was led by Geodesic Capital and Mach33, with participation by Booz Allen Ventures, AlleyCorp and FUSE. It builds on a $17.5 million seed round that was announced last year.

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Cosmic Space

After the moon, astronauts look homeward – and outward

Stars sparkle in a photo of the Milky Way captured by the Artemis 2 crew. The Large Magellanic Cloud is visible at lower right. (NASA Photo)

After capturing more than 175 gigabytes of data during this week’s lunar flyby, the crew of NASA’s Artemis 2 mission turned their cameras toward the heavens — and turned their hearts toward home.

Pilot Victor Glover told journalists during today’s space-to-ground news conference that he’s been thinking about the return to Earth ever since the day that he was assigned to the crew in 2023.

“At one of the first press conferences, we were asked, ‘What are we looking forward to?’ And I said, ‘Splashdown.’ It’s kind of humorous, but it’s literal as well, that we have to get back,” he said.

From here on out, Glover and his crewmates — commander Reid Wiseman, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — will be getting ready for their Orion space capsule to hit Earth’s atmosphere at a velocity of 24,500 mph and make a parachute-aided descent to a splashdown off the Southern California coast on Friday, April 10. Coverage of the crew’s return will be streamed via YouTube, with splashdown scheduled for 5:07 p.m. PT.

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Feast your eyes on moon views, from Earthset to eclipse

Wide-angle version of Artemis 2's Earthset photo, with crescent Earth sinking behind the cratered moon
A crescent Earth sinks behind the moon’s disk in a wide-angle version of the Artemis 2 crew’s “Earthset” picture. (NASA Photo)

A day after the Artemis 2 mission’s lunar flyby, NASA has released a stunning set of high-resolution images documenting Earthset and Earthrise, a solar eclipse that set the moon aglow, and other views of the lunar far side and the astronauts who took the pictures.

The photos were taken during a seven-hour lunar observation period at the farthest point of the Orion space capsule’s 10-day odyssey. The mission marked the first crewed trip around the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972, and the farthest-ever voyage by space travelers (252,756 miles from Earth, and more than 4,000 miles beyond the moon).

The Earthset photo was captured just as our home planet was sinking beneath the lunar horizon, followed about 40 minutes later by a picture of Earth rising on the other side of the moon. The pictures rekindled the spirit of NASA’s original Earthrise photo, taken by astronaut Bill Anders during Apollo 8’s round-the-moon mission in 1968.

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Starfish Space raises $110M for satellite servicing

Illustration: Starfish Space's Otter in geostationary Earth orbit with Earth in background
An artist’s conception shows Starfish Space’s Otter satellite servicing vehicle in geostationary Earth orbit. (Starfish Space Illustration)

Tukwila, Wash.-based Starfish Space says it has raised about $110 million in a funding round that will help the company execute its first satellite servicing missions and scale up operations for more business.

The Series B round was led by Point72 Ventures. Activate Capital and Shield Capital were co-leaders of the round. Additional major participants included Industrious Ventures and NightDragon. The round also drew support from several existing Starfish investors (NFX, Munich Re Ventures, Toyota Ventures and PSL Ventures) as well as new investors (Nomi Capital, Gaingels and Overlap Holdings).

The new capital adds to previous funding rounds announced in 2021, 2023 and 2024, and pushes Starfish’s total investment past the $150 million mark.

Starfish Space was founded in 2019 by engineers Austin Link and Trevor Bennett, two veterans of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture. The company has developed a space vehicle called Otter, which is designed to rendezvous and dock with other objects in orbit — either to maneuver them into a different orbit or guide them to safe disposal.

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