Author: Alan Boyle

Mastermind of Cosmic Log, contributing editor at GeekWire, author of "The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made a Big Difference," president of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing. Check out "About Alan Boyle" for more fun facts.

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Fiction Science Club

Chasing SpaceX: The new space race gets a reality check

Astra / Firefly / Rocket Lab / Planet space hardware
Astra, Firefly Aerospace and Rocket Lab build rockets, while Planet Labs builds satellites. (Credits: Astra / Firefly / Rocket Lab / NASA)

Can anyone keep up with SpaceX in the commercial space race?

It might be one of the four companies profiled in “When the Heavens Went on Sale” — a new book written by Ashlee Vance, the tech journalist who chronicled SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s feats and foibles eight years ago.

Or it might be one of the dozens of other space ventures that have risen up to seek their fortune on the final frontier. Or maybe no one.

The space race’s ultimate prizes may still be up for grabs, but in Vance’s view, one thing is clear: There wouldn’t be a race if it weren’t for Musk and SpaceX.

“Elon sort of set this whole thing in motion,” Vance says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. “My book is more or less a story of people who want to be the next Elon Musk.”

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Cosmic Tech

WiBotic unveils a pad that can manage drones on its own

PowerPad Pro sitting in a crop field
WiBotic's PowerPad Pro undergoes testing in a farm field. (WiBotic Photo)

Seattle-based WiBotic has made a name for itself with battery charging stations for drones as well as for ground-based robots, and now its best-known charger is getting smarter.

WiBotic’s PowerPad Pro can bring in any type of drone for autonomous charging — without needing a human operator to guide it in — and also download a drone’s high-resolution data for transmission to a remote mission control center.

“We’ve really solved the power and data piece for this,” Ben Waters, Wibotic’s co-founder and CEO, told me.

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Fiction Science Club

How quantum tech could change everything everywhere

Illustration combining 1660 star atlas and picture of quantum computing hardware
Quantum computing could change our perspective on the cosmos. (Illustration: Harmonia Macrocosmica, 1660 / Microsoft, 2022)

What does quantum computing have in common with the Oscar-winning movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once”? One is a mind-blowing work of fiction, while the other is an emerging frontier in computer science — but both of them deal with rearrangements of particles in superposition that don’t match our usual view of reality.

Fortunately, theoretical physicist Michio Kaku has provided a guidebook to the real-life frontier, titled “Quantum Supremacy: How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything.”

“We’re talking about the next generation of computers that are going to replace digital computers,” Kaku says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. “Today, for example, we don’t use the abacus anymore in Asia. … In the future, we’ll view digital computers like we view the abacus: old-fashioned, obsolete. This is for the garbage can. That’s how the future is going to evolve.”

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GeekWire

12 companies collaborate with NASA on tech frontiers

Rocket module sitting outside Blue Origin facility in Florida
One of the modules for the New Glenn rocket sits outside Blue Origin’s Florida factory. (Blue Origin Photo)

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is among 12 companies chosen to collaborate with NASA on new technologies that could become part of future missions to the moon and Mars.

Blue Origin has signed up to work with NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia and Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama on friction-stir additive manufacturing. It’ll also partner with Langley as well as Ames Research Center in California to work on a metallic thermal protection system.

“We’re pleased to have been selected by NASA to partner on developing these technologies,” Blue Origin said in an email.

NASA says Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin and the other 11 companies will advance capabilities and technologies related to the space agency’s Moon to Mars Objectives. The work will be done under the terms of unfunded Space Act Agreements, following up on an Announcement of Collaboration Opportunity issued last year.

That means no money will be transferred between NASA and its partners. Instead, NASA will make its in-house expertise available to help the companies develop products that the space agency could procure for future missions.

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Universe Today

Japanese company loses contact with its moon lander

Earth as seen over moon's horizon during solar eclipse
An image from Hakuto-R shows Earth over the moon's horizon, with a dark spot caused by a total solar eclipse. Credit: ispace

A lunar lander built and operated by ispace, a Japanese startup, descended to the surface of the moon today after a months-long journey — but went out of contact and was presumed lost.

“We have to assume that we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface,” ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said during a webcast of the Hakuto-R mission’s final stages.

Ground controllers at the Hakuto-R Mission Control Center in Tokyo continued trying to re-establish communications nevertheless, and Hakamada said his company would try again.

“We are very proud of the fact that we have achieved many things during this Mission 1,” he said. “We will keep going. Never quit the lunar quest.”

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Universe Today

Starship has a glorious liftoff — but then breaks up

Starship liftoff, with smoke and flames
SpaceX's Starship super-rocket rises from its Texas launch pad. Credit: SpaceX via YouTube

SpaceX’s Starship launch system lifted off on its first full-scale test flight today, rising majestically from its Texas launch pad but falling short of stage separation.

The uncrewed mission represented the most ambitious test yet for the world’s most powerful rocket — which eventually could send people to the moon and Mars, and even between spaceports on our own planet.

Liftoff from SpaceX’s Starbase complex at Boca Chica on the South Texas coast came at 8:33 a.m. CDT (9:33 a.m. EDT). The Starship system’s Super Heavy booster, powered by 33 methane-fueled Raptor rocket engines, rose into clear skies with a deafening roar and a blazing pillar of flame.

Hundreds of SpaceX employees cheered at the company’s California headquarters, but the crowd turned quiet three minutes into the flight when the Starship upper stage failed to separate from the booster as planned. The entire rocket spun in the air as a ground-based camera watched.

A minute later, SpaceX’s flight termination system destroyed both stages of the rocket as a safety measure. “Obviously, we wanted to make it all the way through, but to get this far, honestly, is amazing,” launch commentator Kate Tice said.

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GeekWire

Aerojet Rocketdyne wins $67M award for Orion thrusters

Orion making a lunar flyby
An artist’s conception shows the Orion spacecraft’s main engine firing during a lunar flyby. (NASA Illustration)

Aerojet Rocketdyne says it’s received a $67 million contract award from Lockheed Martin to provide propulsion systems for the Orion spacecraft that’ll carry astronauts to the moon during three missions planned for the 2030s.

The contract option for NASA’s Artemis 6, 7 and 8 missions follows up on Aerojet’s work on earlier missions in the Artemis program — including the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission that flew around the moon last year, and the history-making Artemis 3 mission that’s due to put a crew on the lunar surface in the mid-2020s.

“We’re proud to be part of a team that has demonstrated the ability to safely and efficiently carry astronauts on future Artemis missions, effectively ushering in an exciting new generation of human spaceflight,” Aerojet Rocketdyne CEO and President Eileen Drake said today in a news release.

Aerojet says the contract will be managed and performed out of the company’s facility in Redmond, Wash. Work will also be conducted at Aerojet facilities in Alabama and Virginia.

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Universe Today

Juice probe looks back on its way to Jupiter’s moons

The Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden are prominent in this Earth snapshot from Juice. Credit: ESA / Juice / JMC, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

As the European Space Agency’s Juice spacecraft headed out on an eight-year trip to Jupiter’s icy moons, it turned back to snap some selfies with Earth in the background — and those awesome shots are just the start.

The bus-sized probe is due to make four slingshot flybys of Earth and Venus to pick up some gravity-assisted boosts to its destination — and ESA mission managers plan to have the monitoring cameras running during those close encounters.

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GeekWire

Space startups get a boost from Amazon’s cloud

Illustrations: Space hardware under development at Lunasonde, Raven and Rogue
Startups in this year’s AWS Space Accelerator program include, from left, Lunasonde, which is developing a space-based radar sounding system; Raven Space Systems, which is building 3D-printed re-entry capsules; and Rogue Space Systems, which focuses of space robotic systems.

The 14 startups selected for Amazon Web Services’ third annual AWS Space Accelerator program include a company that’s building 3D-printed space capsules, a company that’s developing a fleet of space robots — and even a company that’s headquartered in Amazon’s neck of the woods.

Seattle-based Integrate Space is the first startup from Washington state chosen to participate in the program.

“I’m stoked (all pun intended) to be supported by a Seattle-based company … as the Seattle space startup scene has grown so much over the past 10 years,” Integrate Space co-founder and CEO John Conafay told me in an email.

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Universe Today

AI produces a sharper image of M87’s black hole

Three views of M87's black hole
Three views of a black hole, from left to right: Event Horizon Telescope's original image, PRIMO reconstruction and image blurred to match EHT's resolution. (Credit: Lia Medeiros et al. / ApJL, 2023)

Astronomers have used machine learning to sharpen up the Event Horizon Telescope’s first picture of a black hole — an exercise that demonstrates the value of artificial intelligence for fine-tuning cosmic observations.

The image should guide scientists as they test their hypotheses about the behavior of black holes, and about the gravitational rules of the road under extreme conditions.

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