SpaceX's Starship SN8 prototype fires its engines for liftoff from its Texas launch pad. (SpaceX Photo)
SpaceX put its Starship super-rocket through its first high-altitude test today — and although the flight ended in a fiery crash, the performance was impressive enough to draw congratulations from Jeff Bezos, who’s locked in a multibillion-dollar rivalry with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
“Anybody who knows how hard this stuff is is impressed by today’s Starship test,” Bezos, who’s the CEO of Amazon and the founder of the Blue Origin space venture, said in an Instagram post. “Big congrats to the whole SpaceX team. I’m confident they’ll be back at it soon.”
An artist's conception shows the National Team's landing system in lunar orbit. (Blue Origin Illustration)
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin venture and its partners in the space industry say they’ve given NASA their proposal for a landing system designed to carry astronauts down to the surface of the moon and bring them back up. And they’ve released a 10-minute video explaining how they plan to do it.
This week’s submission of the Blue Origin-led team’s so-called Option A proposal marks a critical step in NASA’s process to select the commercial ventures that will build the human landing system (or systems) for its Artemis moon program. The current schedule calls for the first crewed Artemis landing to take place in 2024, although that date may slip.
NASA has identified three potential providers for the landing system, which would link up with NASA’s Orion deep-space capsule or the yet-to-be-built Gateway platform in high lunar orbit. In addition to Blue Origin’s “National Team,” California-based SpaceX and a team led by Alabama-based Dynetics are in the running.
Early next year, NASA is expected to select one or two teams to move on to the next phase of development.
But Singh found out that Microsoft’s billionaire co-founder is a quick learner. “When he thinks something is important he can dive really deep and become an expert in that area,” he told Fortune. “He has gotten very deep into this area.”
Today QuantumScape reported eye-opening progress in its campaign to produce a solid-state alternative to lithium-ion batteries, the current industry standard for energy storage applications ranging from smartphones and laptops to electric cars and airplanes.
The Silicon Valley company said its tests with prototype single-layer cells demonstrated the ability to recharge batteries up to 80% capacity in just 15 minutes. The data suggest that the technology could produce car batteries capable of lasting hundreds of thousands of miles and weathering temperatures as low as -30 degrees Celsius (22 degrees below zero Fahrenheit).
Satellite views of Arecibo, a new prize to counter a future food crisis, NASA’s plans for science missions on the moon: Here’s your daily dose of space and science on the Web…
The 900-ton platform suspended above the Arecibo Observatory dish collapsed last week. A Planet SkySat captured a cloud-free collect of the devastating aftermath yesterday, December 6th. pic.twitter.com/mLxpofBbQP
$15 million XPRIZE program targets food of the future: XPRIZE has put together a four-year, $15 million competition to encourage the development of new alternatives to chicken breasts and fish fillets that outperform the originals in terms of environmental sustainability, nutrition and health — while replicating the taste and texture.
NASA lays out science plan for future moon landings: A new report suggests that NASA should send equipment to the moon in advance of the Artemis program’s first crewed lunar landing, which is currently set for 2024. The report lays out strategies for planning science missions near the moon’s south pole, as well as the priorities for study. Those priorities include field geology, sample collection and return, and the deployment of scientific experiments.
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket lofts a set of 60 Starlink satellites into orbit on Nov. 24. (SpaceX Photo)
SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network — which relies on hundreds of spacecraft built in Redmond, Wash. — has been awarded $885.5 million in federal subsidies to boost high-speed internet service to rural Americans.
The awards are part of a $9.2 billion allocation made under the terms of the Federal Communications Commission’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Phase I auction.
In all, 180 bidders won subsidies that are to be paid out over the next 10 years. Only one other satellite broadband provider is on the FCC list: Hughes Network Systems, which will receive $1.3 million to serve rural sites in Rhode Island.
The FCC said the RDOF program will provide $222.8 million to support broadband service to rural communities in Washington state. SpaceX is due to get the biggest share of those subsidies, amounting to $80.4 million. Washington also leads the state-by-state list for SpaceX subsidies.
More than 5.2 million homes and businesses are expected to benefit from the program, in which funds were allocated through a reverse auction.
Chang’e-5’s orbiter approaches the lunar ascent module for docking. (CNSA / CLEP Photo)
Two robotic Chinese spacecraft have docked in lunar orbit for the first time ever, in preparation for sending samples from the Moon to Earth.
The lunar ascent module for China’s Chang’e-5 mission was captured by the metal claws of the mission’s orbiter at 5:42 a.m. Beijing time Dec. 6 (1:42 p.m. PT Dec. 5), the China National Space Administration reported.
Over the half-hour that followed, a canister containing lunar material was safely transferred to the orbiter’s attached Earth-return capsule. In the days ahead, the ascent module will be jettisoned, and the orbiter will fire its thrusters to carry the return capsule back toward Earth.
If all proceeds according to plan, the orbiter will drop off the return capsule for its descent to Inner Mongolia sometime around Dec. 16, with the exact timing dependent on the mission team’s analysis of the required trajectory. That would mark the first return of fresh material from the Moon since the Soviet Luna 24 spacecraft accomplished the feat back in 1976.
An artist's conception shows Hayabusa 2’s sample return capsule descending to Earth while the mothership flies above. (JAXA Illustration)
Japan’s Hayabusa 2 probe zoomed past Earth today and dropped off a capsule containing bits of an asteroid, finishing a six-year round trip.
But the mission is far from over: While Hayabusa 2’s parachute-equipped sample capsule descended to the Australian Outback, its mothership set a new course for an encounter with yet another asteroid in 2031.
Hayabusa 2’s prime objective was to deliver bits of Ryugu, an asteroid that’s currently 7.2 million miles from Earth. Mission controllers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, cheered and laughed when word came that the capsule had survived atmospheric re-entry.
Imagery captured by tracking cameras — and from the International Space Station — showed the capsule streaking like a fireball across the sky as it decelerated from an initial speed of more than 26,000 mph.
Blue Origin’s BE-7 rocket engine goes through a test firing. (Blue Origin Photo)
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos heralded progress on the development of the rocket engine that’s destined for use on the lunar lander that his Blue Origin space venture is building — but he also offered a glimpse into his crystal ball for future moon missions.
“This is the engine that will take the first woman to the surface of the moon,” he wrote in an Instagram posting about the hydrogen-fueled BE-7 engine.
Artificial intelligence is expected to be an increasingly important policy issue. (Bigstock Illustration / Andrey Popov)
President Donald Trump today signed an executive order that puts the White House Office of Management and Budget in charge of drawing up a roadmap for how federal agencies use artificial intelligence software.
The roadmap, due for publication in 180 days, will cover AI applications used by the federal government for purposes other than defense or national security. The Department of Defense and the U.S. intelligence community already have drawn up a different set of rules for using AI.
Today’s order could well be the Trump administration’s final word on a technology marked by rapid innovation — and more than a little controversy.
Future regulations could have an outsized impact on Amazon and Microsoft, two of the largest developers of AI technologies. The sharpest debates have focused on facial recognition software, but there are also issues relating to algorithmic bias, data privacy and transparency.
An artist’s conception shows the uncrewed cargo version of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lunar lander. (Blue Origin Illustration)
NASA has selected four companies to collect material on the moon and store it up as the space agency’s property, for a total price of $25,001. And one deal stands out: a $1 purchase that may rely on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture.
Although this sounds like the sort of deal Amazon might have offered on Cyber Monday, neither Seattle-based Amazon nor Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin is directly involved in the purchase.
Lunar Outpost CEO Justin Cyrus said his company’s collection system could fly on any lander heading to the moon, and not necessarily on the Blue Moon lander. But in order to have the $1 deal accepted, Lunar Outpost had to give NASA adequate assurances that it could fly with Blue Origin.
