Month: August 2025

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Universe Today

SpaceX’s Starship goes the distance in 10th test flight

Starship liftoff from Texas launch pad
SpaceX's Starship rocket rises from its launch pad at Starbase, Texas. (Credit: SpaceX via YouTube)

SpaceX executed the most successful flight test of its super-powerful Starship launch system to date, featuring Starship’s first-ever payload deployment and a thrilling Indian Ocean splashdown. Today’s 10th test flight followed three earlier missions that fell short of full success.

Starship’s Super Heavy booster rose from SpaceX’s Starbase launch pad in South Texas at 6:30 p.m. CT (4:30 p.m. PT) after a trouble-free countdown. The first launch attempt had to be called off on Aug. 24 due to a leaky hose in the ground support system, and a second attempt was scrubbed on Aug. 25 because of unacceptable weather.

During today’s liftoff, all 33 of the booster’s methane-fueled Raptor engines lit up to send the upper stage, known as Ship 37, to a height of more than 110 miles (180 kilometers). After stage separation, Ship’s six Raptor engines took over, and Super Heavy conducted a series of test maneuvers before sinking into the Gulf of Mexico.

“Incredible flight for booster today,” SpaceX engineer Amanda Lee said during today’s webcast.

Halfway through its not-quite-orbital trip, Ship 37 opened a slot to deploy eight thin Starlink satellite simulators, in a manner reminiscent of cranking out candies from a Pez dispenser. Hundreds of SpaceX employees cheered as they watched space-to-ground video feeds at Starbase and at the company’s HQ in California. The dummy satellites were designed to burn up during atmospheric re-entry.

Today’s successful deployment buoyed SpaceX’s confidence that in the future, each Starship mission will be able to deploy scores of next-generation satellites for the Starlink broadband data constellation.

The end of today’s test mission came when Ship made a blazing descent through the atmosphere. At one point, a webcam picked up a view of debris flying off from the skirt around the engines at the bottom of the rocket ship. Yet another shot showed red-hot material being blasted away from Ship 37’s control flaps.

“We’re kind of being mean to this Starship,” SpaceX launch commentator Dan Huot said. “We’re really trying to see what are its limits. … We are pushing it beyond essentially what we think we’ll have to fly at.”

Despite the damage, Ship 37 was able to relight its rocket engines, flip around and splash down into the Indian Ocean. Then it exploded into flames. The whole test flight took just a little more than an hour.

“We promised maximum excitement. Starship delivered,” Huot said.

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GeekWire

Satellite phone service raises its orbit into the data zone

Photoillustration: Hiker using mobile phone in countryside with magenta-tinged satellites in the sky above
T-Mobile says satellite access will get rid of “dead zones” for mobile phone apps. (T-Mobile Photoillustration)

T-Mobile subscribers who buy one of the phones in Google’s newly announced Pixel 10 lineup will be able to explore a new frontier in mass-market mobile connectivity: satellite access to data-dependent apps, including Google Maps.

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Cosmic Tech

How watching the watchers could help stop Big Brother

"Big Brother Is Watching You" graffiti on a wall.
"Big Brother Is Watching You," a surveillance slogan made famous in George Orwell's "1984," is stenciled on the wall of an industrial building in Ukraine's Donetsk region. (Credit: Борис У. / Boris U. / 2010 / CC BY-SA 3.0)

If Big Brother is watching us, can we fend him off by watching him back? Thanks to the proliferation of smartphone videos and social media connections, we’re starting to find out.

The past, present and future of surveillance technology was the focus for one of the sessions last week at Seattle Worldcon 2025, this year’s edition of the world’s premier science-fiction convention.

Surveillance societies have been a frequent topic in science fiction, with George Orwell’s “1984” (which gave birth to the slogan “Big Brother Is Watching You”) and “Minority Report” (a 2002 Tom Cruise movie based on a 1956 novella by Philip K. Dick) among notable examples.

But last week’s session focused primarily on fact, not fiction.

Futurist and sci-fi author David Brin noted that his nonfiction book on privacy and freedom, “The Transparent Society,” came out 27 years ago. “Unfortunately, too many of the chapters are completely relevant today,” he said.

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GeekWire

‘Game of Thrones’ creator traces his twists and turns

Neil Clarke and George R.R. Martin sitting at a table during Seattle Worldcon 2025 panel
George R.R. Martin takes part in a panel discussion at Seattle Worldcon 2025 as sci-fi editor Neil Clarke looks on. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

If you were to track the milestones in the career of George R.R. Martin, the science-fiction and fantasy writer whose knightly tales spawned HBO’s “Game of Thrones” and “House of the Dragon,” you’d have to include his twisted take on “The Pit and the Pendulum” in high school.

Martin — who famously killed off good-guy Ned Stark early in the “Game of Thrones” saga — recounted an early stage of his literary origin story during a panel session at Seattle Worldcon 2025, a prestigious science-fiction convention that wraps up today.

The spark for the story came when fellow sci-fi writer Isabel J. Kim told Martin that the father of a friend had lent her a 1966 yearbook from Martin’s high school, in hopes that the 76-year-old author would add a fresh signature over his class photo.

The crowd laughed at the contrast between the fresh-faced kid in the yearbook photo and Martin’s current bewhiskered visage — but seeing the yearbook reminded Martin of a story.

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Cosmic Books

‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ doubles up on Hugo Awards

Triptych featuring Timothee Chalamet in "Dune, Part Two," a Hugo Award trophy and characters from "Star Trek: Lower Decks"
"Dune: Part Two" (starring Timothee Chalamet, at left) and "Star Trek: Lower Decks" were among Hugo Award winners at Seattle Worldcon 2025. (Credits: Legendary Pictures / Warner Bros. for "Dune: Part Two"; Alan Boyle for Hugo Award photo; CBS Studios for "Star Trek: Lower Decks")

“Star Trek: Lower Decks,” the animated Trek spinoff that focuses on Starfleet’s lower ranks, scored a double win tonight when this year’s Hugo Awards were handed out at the world’s premier convention for science-fiction authors and fans.

One of the episodes of the Paramount+ streaming series, titled “The New Next Generation,” won the Hugo for best short-form dramatic presentation at Seattle Worldcon 2025. And a choose-your-adventure graphic novel — titled “Star Trek: Lower Decks – Warp Your Own Way” — took the prize for best graphic story or comic.

Series creator Mike McMahan accepted the award for the video episode in a video clip that was aired during the ceremony.

“I love being recognized by a community who have recommended so many good and weird books to me over the years,” he said. “I congratulate all the winners, but also all of those who support and work and represent, because it’s also in that direction that advancement and liberty and democracy will proceed.”

The writer for the graphic novel, Ryan North, thanked McMahan in turn for letting the team do a choose-your-adventure book. “Weird books are great,” North said. “That’s what I love about reading. The weirder the better.”

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GeekWire

Science-fiction fans worry about AI in the real world

Image of human hand next to robot hand resting on a keyboard
Will generative AI take the upper hand in the writing process? (Bigstock Image / Copyright: Kung_Tom)

Worries about the dark side of artificial intelligence are stirring up a lot of buzz at the world’s premier science-fiction convention, taking place this week in Seattle, and not just because intelligent machines are standard plot devices in sci-fi tales.

When the organizers of Seattle Worldcon 2025 acknowledged in April that ChatGPT was used to vet potential panelists for the event, it caused such an outcry that the organizers ended up issuing an apology and redoing the process without AI tools. The episode also inspired some writers and fans to organize a one-day, AI-free alternative conference called ConCurrent Seattle, which takes place on Thursday near Worldcon’s venue.

Frank Catalano, a former tech executive and GeekWire contributor who is participating in three Worldcon panels this week, said science-fiction writers and artists fear that generative AI tools are plagiarizing their works to create automated products. (Full disclosure: My own book, “The Case for Pluto,” is among the thousands of copyrighted works that were used to train Meta’s Llama 3 AI model.)

“For writers, AI is an existential issue,” Catalano said. “I think it understandably freaks writers out, especially science-fiction writers, to think that there are people talking that their work is obsolete because of technology they once wrote about.”

The concerns go far beyond job security for science-fiction writers. The broader debate was front and center today at the first of several Worldcon panels focusing on the tech world’s AI revolution.

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GeekWire

Worldcon celebrates science fiction’s past and future

Illustration showing futuristic cartoon characters with Seattle Worldcon 2025 sign
Seattle Worldcon 2025 strikes a retro-futuristic theme. (Characters by Matt Youngmark / Logo by Rob Carlos)

Thousands of science fiction and fantasy fans will be going back to the future this week when Seattle plays host to Worldcon, the world’s premier sci-fi convention, for the first time since the Space Needle opened its doors.

“The Pacific Northwest is a great community of makers and doers and learners, and people really deeply engaged in speculative fiction and all that genre has to offer,” Kathy Bond, the chair of Seattle Worldcon 2025, told me. “We want to share that with the rest of our world community.”

Registered Worldcon members selected the site of the annual convention under the auspices of the World Science Fiction Society — a tradition that started with the first convention in New York City in 1939. Seattle’s organizers have been preparing for this week since 2017, when they sent in their initial bid to host Worldcon.

Bond, a volunteer who works as an attorney at her day job, became involved after attending her first Worldcon in 2015 in Spokane. “From there, I got it into my head that we could totally do this in Seattle,” Bond said.

The path hasn’t always been smooth: This spring, a controversy arose over the revelation that generative AI was used to glean information about prospective speakers. Bond issued an apology, and the organizers reworked the process for vetting Worldcon’s panelists — but the episode led some writers and fans to create a one-day alternative convention called ConCurrent Seattle, set for Aug. 14.

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GeekWire

NASA thanks suppliers for work on the next big moonshot

NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg in lab at L3Harris / Aerojet Rocketdyne in Redmond, Wash.
NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg faces the TV cameras at L3Harris’ Aerojet Rocketdyne facility in Redmond, Wash. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

REDMOND, Wash. — The first crewed flight around the moon in more than 50 years is still months away, but NASA is already saying thank you to L3Harris Technologies’ Aerojet Rocketdyne segment and other suppliers who are making the trip possible.

Today, NASA’s road trip brought agency officials — plus astronaut Woody Hoburg — to the L3Harris facility in Redmond, which has contributed propulsion systems to NASA missions ranging from space shuttle flights to the Voyager probes’ journeys to the edge of the solar system.

Now NASA is getting ready to launch four astronauts on a round-the-moon mission known as Artemis 2, powered in part by hardware built in Redmond. Hoburg, who spent six months on the International Space Station in 2023 and is awaiting his next crew assignment, told an audience of about 200 L3Harris employees and VIPs that the Artemis 2 crew is well aware of the company’s contribution.

“They’re depending on you, and they know they can count on you,” he said. “Thank you for all the hard work you’re doing to make this amazing adventure possible.”

The Artemis 2 mission is currently targeted for launch next April, or perhaps even earlier, said Howard Hu, NASA’s program manager for the Orion crew vehicle. The mission after that, Artemis 3, is due to lift off no earlier than mid-2027 with the goal of landing astronauts on the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972.

L3Harris’ Aerojet Redmond team delivered the hardware for those two Artemis missions — including auxiliary engines for Orion’s European-built service module — years ago. Now the team is working on thrusters for missions as far out as Artemis 8, which is scheduled to go the moon no earlier than 2033.

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Fiction Science Club

Climate-fiction thriller explores Florida’s flooded future

Detail from "Salvagia" book cover
The cover art for "Salvagia" features a semi-sentient boat and "atmo-breaker" rockets. (Artwork: Steve Thomas for Diversion Books)

How will technology — and society — adapt to the dramatic effects that climate change is expected to bring? Will necessity become the mother of invention in a world of rising seas? Will it be business as usual? Or will it be a little bit of both those scenarios?

A new sci-fi novel called “Salvagia” takes the third way: There are high-tech salvagers who make ends meet by dredging up artifacts from the flooded ruins of Miami. There are high-flying daredevils who race rockets through minefields of space junk.  And there are also greedy folks who dream of using massive machines to build high-rises on South Florida’s new coast.

Guess which ones are the bad guys.

The book’s author, Tim Chawaga, says he wanted to blend the glittery tech of our modern world with the gritty drama of a Florida noir crime novel. “I wanted it to be like street-level conversations about how individual people can use technology in more powerful ways,” he says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast.

“It’s characters who are outsiders, outside of institutions, trying to build something else. … It’s not likely that they will achieve that in a meaningful and significant way. Maybe at best, incremental. And that feels very noirish to me,” he says.

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GeekWire

NASA funds studies focusing on orbital transfer vehicles

Illustration: Blue Ring vehicle in orbit
An artist’s conception shows the Blue Ring space platform in orbit. (Blue Origin Illustration)

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is among six companies that will be producing studies for NASA looking at low-cost ways to use orbital transfer vehicles to deliver spacecraft to hard-to-reach orbits for the space agency.

The awards will support nine studies in all, with a maximum total value of about $1.4 million, NASA said today.

“With the increasing maturity of commercial space delivery capabilities, we’re asking companies to demonstrate how they can meet NASA’s need for multi-spacecraft and multi-orbit delivery to difficult-to-reach orbits beyond current launch service offerings,” Joe Dant, orbital transfer vehicle strategic initiative owner for the Launch Services Program at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, said in a news release. “This will increase unique science capability and lower the agency’s overall mission costs.”

Blue Origin will conduct two studies — one that focuses on potential NASA applications for its Blue Ring multi-mission space mobility platform, and another that focuses on how the upper stage of its New Glenn rocket could be used.

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