Cosmic Log
NASA says it’ll fund more than 400 ideas from small businesses, aimed at creating technologies ranging from plumbing fixtures suitable for the moon to AI-based medical assistants that can provide “an extra pair of trained eyes” for crews on Mars.
The contracts will provide about $51 million to 312 small businesses in 44 states and Washington, D.C., to support the development of technologies that could come in handy for space exploration or Earth-based applications.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the third in a series of next-generation GPS III satellites into orbit today, marking another step forward for America’s satellite-based navigation system and the Space Force that manages it.
Today’s 112th anniversary of a close brush with a cosmic catastrophe serves as a teachable moment about the perils and prospects posed by near-Earth asteroids.
Asteroid Day is timed to commemorate a blast from space that occurred over a Siberian forest back on June 30, 1908. The explosion, thought to have been caused by the breakup of an asteroid or comet, wiped out millions of acres of trees — but because the area was so remote, the death toll was minimal.
Because of the Tunguska blast and more recent close calls, such as the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor blast, the threat from above is being taken more seriously. And although a Seattle-area asteroid mining venture called Planetary Resources fizzled, experts say the idea of extracting resources from near-Earth asteroids is worth taking seriously as well.
Amazon Web Services today unveiled a new business unit devoted to developing data infrastructure and cloud services for the aerospace and satellite industry — and headed by someone who helped set up the U.S. Space Force.
The Aerospace and Satellite Solutions business segment will be headed by retired Air Force Major Gen. Clint Crosier, former director of Space Force Planning.
“We find ourselves in the most exciting time in space since the Apollo missions,” Crosier said in today’s announcement from Amazon. “I have watched AWS transform the IT industry over the last 10 years and be instrumental in so many space milestones. I am honored to join AWS to continue to transform the industry and propel the space enterprise forward.”
The unveiling was announced by Teresa Carlson at the AWS Public Sector Summit Online. “Whether on Earth or in space, AWS is committed to understanding our customers’ missions,” she said.
Billionaire Elon Musk knows his stuff when it comes to rockets or electric cars. But does that translate into epidemiological expertise? Not completely, according to Washington state’s coronavirus trackers.
Musk weighed in today with a Twitter response to a GeekWire story that focused on Washington’s rising number of COVID-19 cases as well as Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Tech leaders typically use their TED talks to sketch out an optimistic vision of the future, but today Bill Gates used his to warn about a rough autumn ahead due to the continuing coronavirus pandemic.
“There’s good progress … but nothing that would fundamentally alter the fact that this fall in the United States could be quite bad, and that’s worse than I would have predicted a month ago,” he told moderator Chris Anderson during a live-streamed TED2020 Q&A.
Although Gates didn’t mention President Donald Trump by name, he faulted a lack of American leadership for making things worse.
“We need leadership in terms of admitting that we’ve still got a huge problem here, and not turning that into almost a political thing,” he said. “You know, ‘Isn’t it brilliant, what we did?’ No, it’s not brilliant. … We need a leader who keeps us up to date, is realistic, and shows us the right behavior as well as driving the innovation track.”
Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration took a major step toward returning the troubled 737 MAX to full operation today with the first of a series of flights aimed at recertifying the jet in the wake of two catastrophic crashes.
Another tweet, another catfight: Billionaire CEO Elon Musk has once again accused super-billionaire Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos of being a copycat.
This time, Musk took aim at Amazon’s $1.2 billion acquisition of Zoox, a venture focusing on self-driving cars that could compete with Tesla, the car company that Musk heads.
The likeliest purchaser of the bankrupt OneWeb broadband satellite venture isn’t Amazon, but a consortium backed by the British government. That’s according to satellite industry watchers cited by Space Intel Report and The Financial Times.
Amazon, which is working on its own Project Kuiper satellite constellation, was said to be among the entities that expressed interest in bidding on OneWeb’s assets after the London-based satellite concern declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March. OneWeb said the market disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic spoiled arrangements to win further financial support from SoftBank group, one of its biggest backers, forcing the move to seek financial protection.
OneWeb’s assets were put up for sale under the supervision of U.S. bankruptcy court in New York. Bids were due to be opened today for an initial round of assessment. If there’s no clear winner in the eyes of the judge and OneWeb’s creditors, an auction would be held on July 2.
The Financial Times quoted its sources as saying the British government was willing to put up about $617 million (£500 million) as part of a wider private-sector consortium bid. If the bid is successful, the government could end up owning more than 20% of OneWeb, according to The Financial Times.
As concerns about a resurgence of the coronavirus outbreak are widening, so is the reach of the COVID-19 tracking platform created by Sentinel Healthcare, a Seattle-based medical data startup.
The app-based platform was rolled out three months ago, just as the pandemic was taking hold, and it wasn’t long before it was picked up by UT Health Austin in Texas to keep track of the symptoms of quarantined patients.
“We’ve now contact-traced and diagnosed many, many patients,” said Sentinel Healthcare CEO Nirav Shah, a neurologist and the former stroke director at Swedish Hospital in Seattle.
As of this week, about 1,600 of the app’s users in Texas have been diagnosed with COVID-19, triggering contact tracing for more than 4,000 people, Shah told GeekWire.
Shah said Sentinel Monitor started registering a spike in the number of cases being diagnosed about two weeks ago. “That ended up being borne out,” he said. “Looking back over the past 10 days … we’ve seen almost a tripling or quadrupling of daily case counts.”
Now Sentinel will be putting its platform to the test closer to home.
Today the company announced a partnership with Era Living, which runs eight retirement communities in the Seattle area. Sentinel will support Era Living in testing and monitoring its more than 900 employees and 1,300 residents for COVID-19. Seattle-based Transpara Health will provide logistical and operational support.