Month: March 2025

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GeekWire

Space Force adds Stoke and Rocket Lab to launch list

Illustration: Stoke Space Nova rocket in flight
An artist’s conception shows Stoke Space’s Nova rocket in flight. (Stoke Space Illustration)

The U.S. Space Force has added Kent, Wash.-based Stoke Space and California-based Rocket Lab USA to the list of providers for its $5.6 billion round of national security launches.

Each company will receive a $5 million task order to assess its specific capabilities for future launches. Stoke and Rocket Lab join Jeff Bezos’ Kent-based Blue Origin space venture as well as SpaceX and United Launch Alliance on the Pentagon’s current launch service list, known as Phase 3 Lane 1. For this “lane,” the Space Force can select from those five providers during an ordering period that runs through mid-2029, with an option for a five-year extension.

Stoke Space is offering its fully reusable Nova rocket, while Rocket Lab is offering its Neutron rocket. Both of those launch vehicles are still in development and haven’t yet flown in space. Rocket Lab is planning its first Neutron launch in late 2025. Stoke’s first Nova launch could also come as early as this year.

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GeekWire

Gravitics wins Space Force support for orbital carrier

Illustration: Gravitics Orbital Carrier in space
An artist’s conception shows Gravitics’ Orbital Carrier with payloads ready for deployment. (Gravitics Illustration)

The U.S. Space Force has chosen Marysville, Wash.-based Gravitics to build and fly an orbital carrier that could deliver maneuverable space vehicles to the final frontier — and have them ready to respond to future threats.

The project will be supported by up to $60 million in funding, to be provided through the Space Force’s SpaceWERX STRATFI program. That funding would come from government sources as well as private sources, Gravitics said today in a news release.

“We’re honored to partner with the U.S. Space Force on this critical initiative.” Gravitics CEO Colin Doughan said. “The Orbital Carrier is a game-changer, acting as a pre-positioned launch pad in space. It bypasses traditional launch constraints, enabling space vehicle operators to rapidly select a deployment orbit on-demand.”

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GeekWire

Outbound’s first flight test advances airplane ambitions

Demonstrator plane takes off from Oregon airstrip
Outbound’s demonstrator plane takes off from a runway at Pendleton UAS Range in Oregon. (Outbound Aerospace Photo)

Things are looking up for Outbound Aerospace’s quest to build a new kind of passenger airplane. The Seattle startup has raised $1.15 million in pre-seed funding so far, and last weekend it sent a small-scale prototype into the skies over Oregon for its first-ever flight test.

“Over the last month, everything came together, and we went out there and got the plane up in the air, and proved that it flies,” said Jake Armenta, the former Boeing engineer who serves as Outbound’s chief technology officer and co-founder. “So, it’s been a really exciting month or two.”

The demonstrator aircraft — which is code-named STeVE (for Scaled Test Vehicle) — is a remote-controlled plane that weighs 300 pounds and has a 22-foot wingspan. That’s only one-eighth of the planned wingspan for the Olympic airliner that Outbound eventually aims to build. What’s more, the March 22 flight at the Pendleton UAS Range in eastern Oregon lasted merely 16 seconds. Nevertheless, the test proved that Outbound’s 3D-printing fabrication process could turn out a flyable carbon-fiber aircraft.

“We flew this demonstrator because I got a lot of questions,” Armenta said. “People were really pessimistic about us. I got literally laughed out of investors’ rooms here in Seattle because I told people, ‘We’re building an airplane.’ And they were like, ‘You can’t do this. No one can.’”

Despite the skepticism, Outbound has been able to bring in enough investment to support what’s now a full-time staff of five, plus “about half a dozen contractors who have helped us in various ways,” Armenta said. Over the past year, Armenta and his fellow co-founder, CEO Ian Lee, have raised $500,000 from Blue Collective, a matching amount from Antler, and another $150,000 from private investors.

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GeekWire

Prediction: Human-level AI is just a few ‘miracles’ away

Nathan Myhrvold and Todd Bishop on stage at Microsoft@50 event
Intellectual Ventures CEO Nathan Myhrvold makes a point during a chat with GeekWire's Todd Bishop. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)

Will artificial intelligence ever catch up with human intelligence? And if it does, is humanity doomed? Intellectual Ventures CEO Nathan Myhrvold, who had the job of predicting the future of tech during Microsoft’s early years, was ready with some answers this week at GeekWire’s Microsoft@50 anniversary event.

The feature that AI still lacks is the ability to create a new abstract concept, “imbue it with meaning and then reason about it,” said Myhrvold, who joined Microsoft in 1986 and served as the company’s first chief technology officer.

“I think we’ll get there, but that’s at least one miracle that needs to be figured out, and I variously have thought there was like three to five miracles that need to be done. Who knows?” he said during the March 20 event at Town Hall Seattle. “And that could happen tomorrow, or maybe it already happened tonight, and they just haven’t told us. Or it could take another 10 years.”

GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop returned to the topic a minute later. “Did I hear correctly that we’re three to five miracles away from AI that’s as powerful or as intelligent as humans?” he asked.

“Yes,” Myhrvold replied.

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Cosmic Space

Sky survey boosts the case for dark energy’s downturn

Long-exposure photo of Mayall Telescope with circular star trails
A long-exposure photo shows the Mayall Telescope beneath the whirling stars. (Credit: KPNO/ NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / B. Tafreshi)

It’s looking more and more as if dark energy, the mysterious factor that scientists say is behind the accelerating expansion of the universe, isn’t as constant as they once thought.

The latest findings from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, or DESI, don’t quite yet come up to the level of a confirmed discovery, but they’re leading scientists to rethink their views on the evolution of the universe — and how it might end.

Readings from DESI’s Data Release 2, published on March 19, suggest dark energy’s influence isn’t as strong as it used to be. Scientists had thought that the universe’s endless expansion would eventually lead to a state of cosmic stasis known as the “Big Chill.” But if dark energy fizzles out, billions or trillions of years from now, the universe may fall back on itself and end up in a reverse Big Bang, or “Big Crunch.”

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GeekWire

Museum adds a big Blue rocket engine to its collection

Blue Origin engineer polishing rocket engine nozzle
Timothy Hinerman, a program manager at Blue Origin, polishes up the nozzle of a BE-3U rocket engine. (Museum of Flight Photo / Ted Huetter)

Seattle’s Museum of Flight has brought its collection of space artifacts up to the present day, thanks to a rocket engine that’s been donated by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture.

The BE-3U rocket engine, which was used for on-the-ground development work that included hot-fire testing, was installed in the museum’s Charles Simonyi Space Gallery on Monday. Eventually, a 16-foot-tall model of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket will take its place beside the engine.

Two BE-3U engines power the upper stage of the New Glenn orbital-class rocket, which was sent into orbit from the Kent, Wash.-based company’s Florida launch pad for the first time in January. That mission served to test not only the rocket, but also prototype components for Blue Origin’s Blue Ring spacecraft platform. The next New Glenn launch is expected in late spring.

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GeekWire

Portal provides a sneak peek at solar propulsion system

Ribbon-cutting ceremony at Portal Space Systems
VIPs cut the ribbon at Portal Space Systems’ HQ in Bothell, Wash. From left: U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene; Portal co-founders Prashaanth Ravindran, Jeff Thornburg and Ian Vorbach; and Bothell Mayor Mason Thompson. (Credit: Portal Space Systems)

BOTHELL, Wash. — From the outside, Portal Space Systems’ headquarters looks like a standard-issue office space in a Bothell business park. But inside, the Portal team is working to harness the heat of the sun, to speed up how spacecraft get around.

“Think about it as finally bringing what you see in Star Trek into reality in orbit, to actually move spacecraft the way Hollywood had originally intended,” Jeff Thornburg, Portal’s CEO and co-founder, said at today’s ribbon-cutting ceremony for the 8,000-square-foot development lab and HQ.

The hardware that’s spread across Portal’s lab tells you that the four-year-old venture is no typical business-park tenant: In one corner, there’s a gleaming vacuum chamber where components for Portal’s solar thermal propulsion system are being tested. In another corner, a 3D printer stands ready to turn out the parts for subscale test models of the system’s heat-exchanger thruster.

Portal plans to build the system into its Supernova satellite platform. Supernova is designed to use foldable mirrors to focus the sun’s rays onto a heat exchanger. When ammonia passes through the heat exchanger, it rapidly builds up pressure and produces thrust.

Thornburg said the system provides several advantages over traditional rocket thrusters. For example, there’s no need for oxidizers or hard-to-handle cryogenic fuels. “We’re not burning anything,” Thornburg said. “We’re just concentrating the solar energy.”

The biggest advantage is that Supernova should be able to push itself and its attached payload into different orbits much more quickly than your typical spacecraft. “It has the ability to maneuver like nothing else that exists in orbit, which means it can go from low Earth orbit or medium Earth orbit to geostationary orbits within hours or a day,” Thornburg said. “Or it can move from one orbit to another quickly to accomplish a commercial or a defense mission with speeds that typically take weeks and months.”

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Cosmic Space

Get ready to see a total lunar eclipse (or maybe not)

Time-lapse sequence of total lunar eclipse of Sept. 28, 2015
This sequence shows the end-to-end progression of a total lunar eclipse on Sept. 28, 2015. (Credit: Sean Walker via Sky & Telescope)

The first total lunar eclipse since 2022 will turn the full moon an eerie shade of red on the night of March 13-14 — but your chances of seeing it with your own eyes will depend on where you are.

North Americans should have great seats for the eclipse this time around. The key phases of the show, from the time the moon begins to enter the darkest part of Earth’s shadow to the time it leaves, should be visible to the entire continent.

But add some emphasis to the word “should.” In order to see the darkened moon with your own eyes, the skies have to be clear.

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GeekWire

Blue Origin is on deck to send NASA payload to the moon

Illustration: Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander on the moon
An artist’s conception shows the Blue Moon MK1 lander on the moon. (Blue Origin Illustration)

NASA says it has penciled in Blue Origin’s Blue Moon MK1 cargo lander to deliver a scientific payload to the moon’s south polar region as soon as this summer.

The uncrewed lander would rank as the largest spacecraft sent to the moon’s surface, and would set the stage for a larger crewed lander that would be used for moon missions in the 2030s. By that time, if all proceeds according to plan, SpaceX’s Starship would take over the top spot as the world’s most massive moon ship.

Blue Origin was created by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2000 and is headquartered in Kent, Wash. For years, Bezos has voiced a strong interest in lunar exploration. “It’s time to go back to the moon, but this time to stay,” he declared in 2017.

NASA’s payload for Blue Origin’s first mission to the moon is a suite of cameras that’s designed to record how the blast from Blue Moon’s engines disturbs the dirt and rocks at the lunar landing site. The data from that experiment — known as Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume Surface Studies, or SCALPSS — would be factored into the preparations for crewed landings.

Similar payloads flew on Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander, which conducted a partially successful mission on the moon last year; and on Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost M1 lander, which landed on the moon earlier this month. The data from the Blue Moon mission would give NASA a better sense of what to expect when a heavier spacecraft touches down.

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Fiction Science Club

How humans can reinvent themselves for life in space

Robert Pattinson in a double role on an icy planet in "Mickey 17"
Robert Pattinson plays two "expendable" space travelers in "Mickey 17." ( Copyright: © 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.)

Let’s face it: Space is a hostile environment for humans. Even on Mars, settlers might have a hard time coping with potentially lethal levels of radiation, scarce resources and reduced gravity.

In “Mickey 17” — a new sci-fi movie from Bong Joon Ho, the South Korean filmmaker who made his mark with “Parasite” — an expendable space traveler named Mickey (Robert Pattinson) is exposed over and over again to deadly risks. And every time he’s killed, the lab’s 3D printer just churns out another copy of Mickey.

“He’s dying to save mankind,” the movie’s poster proclaims.

While it’s possibly to create 3D-printed body parts for implantation, the idea of printing out a complete human body and restoring its backed-up memories is pure science fiction. Nevertheless, Christopher Mason, a Cornell University biomedical researcher who studies space-related health issues, is intrigued by the movie’s premise.

“If you could 3D print a body and perfectly reconstruct it, you could, in theory, learn a lot about a body that’s put in a more dangerous situation,” he says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. “I think the concept of the movie is actually quite interesting.”

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