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GeekWire

Zeva Aero trades in its flying saucer for an airplane

Zeva Aero, the Tacoma, Wash.-based personal aviation startup that’s been testing flying saucers, is shifting its focus to a more down-to-earth design for aircraft that’ll be capable of vertical takeoffs and landings.

The startup is also getting ready to move its base of operations to Pierce County Airport-Thun Field in Puyallup, Wash. “This will give us room to expand, and the views of Mount Rainier are spectacular,” Zeva said in its announcement of the move.

Zeva founder and CEO Stephen Tibbitts told GeekWire that the roughly 18,000-square-foot leased facility will provide office and shop space, with adjacent land set aside for a future hangar. Zeva plans to move into the new headquarters by the end of May to ramp up work on its new top-priority project.

Tibbitts said the plan for pivoting away from Zeva’s original flying-saucer design took shape over the past year or so.

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Cosmic Tech

IBM marks medical milestone for quantum computers

IBM and Cleveland Clinic today unveiled the first quantum computer dedicated solely to research in health care and life sciences — a sleek cube of glass and metal that’s likely to generate sci-fi movie concepts for years to come.

Researchers hope IBM Quantum System One will eventually generate new biomedical discoveries as well.

“This includes quantum machine learning to design more efficient immunotherapies and designing quantum-accelerated models to predict drug combinations,” Jeanette Garcia, senior research manager of quantum computational science at IBM, said in an emailed statement.

The potential applications extend beyond medical research.

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GeekWire

FCC plans to boost satellite connections to smartphones

The Federal Communications Commission plans to set up a new regulatory framework for facilitate hookups between satellite operators and wireless companies, with the objective of connecting smartphone users in remote or underserved areas of the world.

The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, adopted today, follows up on a string of demonstrations and announcements related to satellite-cellular combinations.

A Virginia-based company called Lynk Global has already shown that its satellite-to-smartphone system works, with the FCC’s blessing. Another satellite venture called AST Spacemobile is setting up partnerships with telecom providers around the world. The heavyweights of the telecom industry are in on the idea as well.

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Cosmic Science

Dinosaur super-necks, flipped fossils and other paleo bits

Paleontologists find the darndest things — including evidence for the longest-known sauropod neck, and fossils that literally turn their assumptions upside down. Check out these fresh developments from the fossil record:

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Universe Today

Pluto team updates science from the solar system’s edge

Nearly eight years after its historic Pluto flyby, NASA’s New Horizons probe is getting ready for another round of observations made from the icy edge of the solar system — and this time, its field of view will range from Uranus and Neptune to the cosmic background far beyond our galaxy.

Scientists on the New Horizons team shared their latest discoveries, and provided a preview of what’s ahead, during this week’s Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas.

It’s been 17 years since the piano-sized New Horizons spacecraft was launched toward Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, The primary mission hit its peak in 2015 when the probe zoomed past Pluto, but the adventure moved on to a second act that focused on a smaller, two-lobed object called Arrokoth — a name derived from the Powhatan/Algonquin word for “sky.”

Scientists are still sifting through the data from the Pluto flyby, and from the Arrokoth flyby on New Year’s Day of 2019, more than 4 billion miles from the sun.

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GeekWire

Amazon shows off antennas for Kuiper satellite network

After years of development, Amazon is showing off the antennas it plans to use for its Project Kuiper satellite broadband network — and says it plans to begin offering beta service for large customers next year.

The largest antenna, for enterprise customers, is about the size of a café table. The antenna designed for home use is as big as an LP record’s album sleeve and should cost around $400 to make. The smallest antenna, still under development, is just a little bigger than an ebook reader.

“I’d be remiss if I didn’t contrast it to a Kindle here,” said Dave Limp, Amazon’s senior vice president of devices and services, who helpfully made the comparison today during the big reveal at the Satellite 2023 conference in Washington, D.C.

Amazon hasn’t yet launched any of the 3,236 satellites for the constellation it plans to operate in low Earth orbit — and it’s far behind SpaceX, which says it already has more than a million customers for its Starlink broadband service. But Limp insisted that Amazon was in position to make rapid progress over the next year.

He noted that the first two prototype Kuiper satellites have just been shipped to Florida, in preparation for launch aboard a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket this spring. And he said multiple satellites should be ready for liftoff by next year. The Kuiper operation is headquartered in Redmond, Wash. — not far from SpaceX’s satellite factory — and Amazon plans to start mass-producing satellites at a factory in Kirkland, Wash., by the end of the year.

Limp said Amazon was on track to launch half of the satellites for the Kuiper constellation by mid-2026, using up to 77 medium- to heavy-lift rockets it’s reserved at ULA as well as at Arianespace and Blue Origin. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns Blue Origin as a separate, privately held space venture.) “For sure we will be beta-testing with large customers in ’24,” Limp said.

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GeekWire

Plans for satellite networks move ahead on multiple fronts

Redmond, Wash.-based Kymeta Corp. says it has completed its first shipment of electronically steered flat-panel antennas to OneWeb for that company’s satellite-based data network.

In a news release timed to coincide with the Satellite 2023 conference in Washington, D.C., Kymeta said its Hawk u8 terminal will be available for OneWeb’s fixed-location applications, and will soon be available for land-based and sea-based mobile communications. OneWeb is putting the finishing touches on its constellation in low Earth orbit, or LEO, and is planning to ramp up commercial broadband service within a few months.

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Universe Today

Don’t panic over the risk of an asteroid smashup in 2046

A newly discovered asteroid called 2023 DW has generated quite a buzz over the past week, due to an estimated 1-in-670 chance of impact on Valentine’s Day 2046. But despite a NASA advisory and the resulting scary headlines, there’s no need to put an asteroid doomsday on your day planner for that date.

The risk assessment doesn’t have as much to do with the probabilistic roll of the cosmic dice than it does with the uncertainty that’s associated with a limited set of astronomical observations. If the case of 2023 DW plays out the way all previous asteroid scares have gone over the course of nearly 20 years, further observations will reduce the risk to zero.

Nevertheless, the hubbub over a space rock that could be as wide as 165 feet (50 meters) highlights a couple of trends to watch for: We’re likely to get more of these asteroid alerts in the years to come, and NASA is likely to devote more attention to heading off potentially dangerous near-Earth objects, or NEOs.

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GeekWire

How Washington rates on NASA’s economic report card

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture leads the list of NASA’s Washington state contractors in a newly released analysis of the agency’s economic impact.

The analysis came out today when NASA released data showing how many jobs and how many procurement dollars were generated during fiscal year 2021 in each of the 50 states, plus the District of Columbia. NASA said this is the first time it has drafted state-specific fact sheets to complement its Economic Impact Report.

“With the president’s fiscal year 2024 budget announcement this week, NASA will remain an economic engine that supports good-paying American jobs, sustains American innovation and strengthens American competitiveness in the 21st century,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a news release. “Our impressive economic impact just scratches the surface of the agency’s influence around the world, and it makes clear that what is good for NASA is good for communities across the country.”

Nationwide, NASA supported more than 339,600 jobs in fiscal year 2021 (which ran from October 2020 to the end of September 2021), based on a multiplier that accounts for direct and indirect economic effects. The space agency said its activities generated more than $71.2 billion in economic output during the fiscal year. Washington state accounted for 4,622 of the jobs resulting from NASA’s economic impact, $1.06 billion in economic output and $426.6 million in NASA procurements.

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GeekWire

Starfish Space raises $14M for satellite servicing vehicles

Starfish Space, a Seattle-area startup founded by two veterans of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture, has raised $14 million in funding to support its plans to develop spacecraft capable of hooking up with bigger satellites to boost their orbits — or safely dispose of them.

The Series A funding round was led by Munich Re Ventures, with additional participation from Toyota Ventures and previous investors including PSL Ventures, NFX and MaC VC. “MRV is excited to back this talented team of engineers, scientists and operators as they aim to open up the in-space economy,” Peter Ortez, a principal at Munich Re Ventures, said today in a news release.

Starfish Space has now attracted a little over $21 million in total investment, including pre-seed and seed funding rounds, said Austin Link, who co-founded the company in 2019 with fellow Blue Origin alumnus Trevor Bennett.

Link said the fresh funding will go toward completing the development of the Otter Pup, a prototype satellite servicing vehicle that’s about the size of a microwave oven, as well as the full-size Otter spacecraft. One of top priorities for the company, which is headquartered in Kent, Wash., is to add to its current headcount of 26 full-time employees.