Author: Alan Boyle

Mastermind of Cosmic Log, contributor to GeekWire and Universe Today, author of "The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made a Big Difference," past president of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.

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GeekWire

FAA finishes investigation of Blue Origin launch mishap

New Shepard rocket ship on pad
Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket ship sits on its pad in advance of its launch in September 2022. (Blue Origin via YouTube)

The Federal Aviation Administration says that it’s closed its investigation of last year’s mishap involving Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital rocket ship, but that Jeff Bezos’ space venture isn’t yet cleared to resume flights.

New Shepard’s engine anomaly occurred during an uncrewed research flight on Sept. 12, 2022, and led to the suspension of further flights. The booster’s misfire marked a rare setback for the New Shepard program, which had conducted more than 20 successful launches at Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas — including six missions that provided suborbital space trips to a total of 31 people.

During last year’s aborted mission, Blue Origin’s launch escape system worked as planned, blasting the capsule away from the booster for a parachute-assisted landing while the booster fell onto the Texas spaceport’s open terrain. The company said that if people had been in the capsule, they would have survived. No one was hurt on the ground.

This March, Blue Origin reported that the booster’s BE-3 rocket engine malfunctioned when its nozzle suffered a structural failure, due to engine operating temperatures that were higher than expected. The FAA said its final report reflects that conclusion.

The FAA also said Blue Origin was required to take 21 corrective actions to prevent a reoccurrence of the mishap. Those measures included a redesign of the engine and nozzle components to improve structural performance during operation, plus organizational changes.

Back in March, Blue Origin said it had already begun implementing corrective actions. “We’ve received the FAA’s letter and plan to fly soon,” the company said today in a posting to X / Twitter.

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GeekWire

Blue Origin’s next CEO has a mission: Speed it up!

Amazon execs Dave Limp, Jay Carney and Jeff Bezos at Amazon Spheres in 2019
Amazon executives Dave Limp, Jay Carney and Jeff Bezos talk with reporters at the Amazon Spheres during a 2019 press reception. Carney now works for Airbnb, while Limp will go to work for Bezos in a new capacity, as CEO of the billionaire’s Blue Origin space venture. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)

Jeff Bezos’ selection of Amazon devices chief Dave Limp as the next CEO of his Blue Origin space venture could well mark the start of a speed-up in the company’s tortoise-like pace.

For years, Bezos has sent out vibes that it might be OK to take it slow in the space race with Elon Musk’s SpaceX. He’d probably deny that’s the case, but it’s a fact that Blue Origin’s mascot is the tortoise rather than the hare in the tale from Aesop’s Fables, and that the company’s motto is “Gradatim Ferociter” — Latin for “Step by Step, Ferociously.” When it comes to space development, Bezos’ favorite sayings include “Slow Is Smooth, and Smooth Is Fast” and “We Don’t Skip Steps.”

Some in the space business would argue that going slow has put Blue Origin so far behind SpaceX that it’ll be difficult if not impossible to catch up.

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GeekWire

Jeff Bezos picks Amazon exec to be Blue Origin’s CEO

Dave Limp at 2019 GeekWire Summit
Blue Origin’s next CEO, Dave Limp, speaks at 2019’s GeekWire Summit. (Photo by Dan DeLong for GeekWire)

Blue Origin has confirmed that Dave Limp, who is leaving his post as Amazon’s senior vice president of devices and services, will take over as the CEO of Jeff Bezos’ privately held space venture.

The current CEO, longtime aerospace executive Bob Smith, is retiring from the post but will stay on with Blue Origin until January to help with the transition, a company spokesperson told me in an email.

Limp presided over Amazon’s Echo hardware line and its Alexa voice assistant business, among other initiatives. The most relevant initiative for Blue Origin would be his oversight of Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellite project, which is due to have its first prototype satellites launched as soon as next month. Those satellites will be sent into low Earth orbit on United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket, but Blue Origin is a major contractor for the Kuiper launches to come.

Reports about the transition began percolating out on social media today, after Blue Origin distributed internal memos to the company’s staff. In today’s emailed statement, Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin praised Limp’s record at Amazon.

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GeekWire

NASA probe delivers asteroid sample — and moves on

Engineer checks out OSIRIS-REx capsule in Utah desert
Lockheed Martin engineer Victoria Theim checks out the OSIRIS-REx capsule after its landing in Utah. (NASA Photo / Keegan Barber)

Seven years and 4 billion miles after its launch, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has successfully dropped off a capsule containing a precious sample of one near-Earth asteroid — and is now on course to rendezvous with another one in 2029.

Rocket thrusters built at Aerojet Rocketdyne’s facility in Redmond, Wash., have been guiding the bus-sized probe every step of the way.

Today marked the climax of OSIRIS-REx — which stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security-Regolith Explorer. The billion-dollar mission is designed to let scientists examine pristine stuff from a space rock that could shed light on the chemistry of the primordial solar system, and give them a better idea of the resources that could someday be gleaned from asteroids.

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Fiction Science Club

Supervillain tale takes aim at today’s tech titans

Blended image of Dr. Evil from "Austin Powers" movie and cover art from "Starter Villain"
"Starter Villain" blends Dr. Evil-like characters with intelligent cats. Credits: New Line Cinema (left); Tristan Elwell for Tor Books (right)

There’s nary a mention of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates in “Starter Villain,” but science-fiction author John Scalzi’s wickedly funny novel finds ways to skewer the tech billionaires who rule our world without dropping names.

Scalzi lays out a scenario in which supervillains are basically the CEOs of companies that do dastardly deeds as a service.

“The point of the supervillainy is not to hide, but to offer products and services that offer value to your clients, who just happen to be, you know, the United States or China, or some major corporation — so that the supervillainy that you do is not seen as outside the pale of standard business practices,” he explains.

If that sounds like today’s billionaire tech disrupters, so be it.

“I will say that the bad behavior of billionaires in 2023 makes this book far more timely than it might otherwise have been,” Scalzi admits in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. “I wrote this about 18 months ago, so we had no idea that several of the world’s biggest billionaires would just be like, ‘Mask off, I’m actually a terrible person!'”

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GeekWire

Stoke Space puts its rocket through a short but sweet hop

Stoke Space's test vehicle fires engine during test "hop"
Stoke Space’s Hopper2 developmental rocket vehicle fires its engine during a test “hop.” (Stoke Space Photo)

A four-year-old Seattle-area startup called Stoke Space executed a successful up-and-down test of its “Hopper” developmental rocket vehicle today, marking a major milestone in its quest to create a fully reusable launch system.

Hopper2’s 15-second flight took place at Stoke’s test facility at Grant County International Airport in Moses Lake, Wash., at 11:24 a.m. PT. A hydrogen-fueled rocket engine sent the test vehicle to a height of 30 feet, with a landing 15 feet away from the launch pad, Stoke CEO Andy Lapsa told me.

“It’s the last test in our development program for Hopper, and by all accounts, it’s been very successful,” Lapsa said.

Today’s test follows up on work that was done this spring with an earlier prototype, Hopper1, and a static engine firing for Hopper2 that was conducted this month.

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GeekWire

Allen Institute hits 20 years on the open science frontier

Allen Institute HQ
The Allen Institute’s HQ is in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)

Twenty years after Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen created the bioscience research center that bears his name, Seattle’s Allen Institute is still pushing out into new frontiers.

But this weekend, the nonprofit institute — and its hometown — are taking a little time to celebrate.

All this week, the Allen Institute has been highlighting Open Science Week, which touches upon one of the core values that Allen had in mind when he launched the institute with a $100 million donation on Sept. 16, 2003. And Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell is giving the festivities an extra boost by issuing a proclamation designating Sept. 16 as “Open Science Day” in the Emerald City.

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Universe Today

NASA says it’ll take on a bigger role in UFO research

Milky Way above Rubin Observatory at night
The Milky Way spreads out in the sky over the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which could play a role in UFO research. (Credit: Bruno C. Quint)

In response to a new report from an independent panel, NASA says it has appointed a director in charge of research into UFOs — now known as unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs — and will work with other agencies to widen the net for collecting UAP data.

“This is the first time that NASA has taken concrete action to seriously look into UAP,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said today during a news briefing at NASA’s headquarters in Washington.

NASA initially kept the name of its UAP research director under wraps, but later in the day, the agency identified him as Mark McInerney, who has previously served as NASA’s liaison to the Department of Defense on the UAP issue.

Nelson downplayed the idea that aliens were behind any of the anomalous phenomena recorded to date, but he pledged to keep an open mind.

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GeekWire

Augmented-reality training system aces flight test

Augmented-reality view of virtual fighter jet
A computer-generated image of a fighter jet shows up on augmented-reality glasses. (Boeing Photo)

Boeing and an augmented-reality company called Red 6 have successfully flown and tested a virtual display system in a TA-4J Skyhawk tactical aircraft, in preparation for putting the system on a T-7 advanced training jet.

The system lets pilots see and interact with virtual aircraft, targets and threats on the ground and in the air, while also experiencing the stresses that come with physically flying their airplane. The idea is to provide pilots with a realistic training environment while minimizing the risks of getting hurt.

“Boeing is the first company to team with Red 6 on this type of advanced training technology,” Donn Yates, executive director of Boeing Air Force Fighters and Trainers Business Development, said today in a news release. “The successful series of ground tests and four flight sorties illustrate our collaborative ability to rapidly integrate, deliver and test new technology with the potential to change fighter pilot training for an entire generation.”

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GeekWire

How satellites and AI work together to monitor the planet

Screengrab of global imagery map from Satlas
Satlas’ AI modeling software improves satellite image resolution by a factor of four. (AI2 / Satlas Image)

Geospatial data analysis promises to revolutionize the way agriculture, urban planning and disaster relief is done — and thanks to a variety of projects that make use of artificial intelligence, Microsoft and Seattle’s Allen Institute for AI are part of that revolution.

The Allen Institute for AI, also known as AI2, recently rolled out Satlas, a new software platform for exploring global geospatial data generated from satellite imagery. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab is working with public and private institutions in Colombia on Project Guacamaya, which uses AI tools to monitor and understand conditions in the Amazon Rainforest.

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