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Amazon Leo revs up work on satellite broadband network

Amazon Leo executive Chris Weber at Mission Operations Center, wearing black-and-krypton T-shirt
Chris Weber, vice president of business and product for Amazon Leo, takes part in coverage of a satellite launch. (Credit: United Launch Alliance)

REDMOND, Wash. — Chris Weber isn’t ready to say yet exactly when Amazon Leo will start letting individual customers sign up for satellite broadband service, but when it happens, he’ll have the right wardrobe for the debut.

During a recent interview at Amazon Leo’s Mission Operations Center in Redmond, Weber sported running shoes in a shade of purple with the Leo brand emblazoned on the back.

“It’s not purple, it’s krypton,” Weber, who came over from GitLab in 2024 to become Amazon Leo’s vice president of business and product, told me. “Krypton is the color when our thrusters fire in space, so we picked that. It was obviously available in the Amazon palette. … There’s a lot of meaning and thought that went into our brands, and we’re quite excited about that.”

It’s been a year since Amazon Leo, formerly known as Project Kuiper, began its multibillion-dollar campaign to send up thousands of satellites to provide broadband internet access across the globe. So far, 304 satellites have been deployed over the course of 11 launches — and Weber said the Amazon Leo team will be running twice as hard in the year ahead.

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Blue Origin might look beyond Jeff Bezos’ backing

Blue Origin New Glenn rocket lifting off from Florida launch pad
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket lifts off from its Florida launch pad in April. (Blue Origin Photo)

For more than a quarter-century, Jeff Bezos has been funding his Blue Origin space venture primarily with his gains from Amazon, the other big company he founded — but according to a report in the Financial Times, Blue Origin is now weighing a plan to seek outside investment for the first time.

The report says Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp told employees at a recent all-hands meeting that the company might have to turn to external fundraising if it went ahead with plans to increase its launch cadence significantly. The Financial Times attributed its report to two unidentified sources who attended the meeting. We’ve reached out to Blue Origin for comment and will update this report with anything we hear back. The company doesn’t typically comment on claims attributed to unidentified sources.

Blue Origin launched its heavy-lift New Glenn rocket for the first time in January 2025, and two more New Glenn missions have followed since then. The most recent launch took place last month but failed to put its payloads in their proper orbit. As a result, New Glenn is grounded until the company completes an investigation and takes corrective actions under the oversight of the Federal Aviation Administration.

Past reports have suggested that Blue Origin was targeting as many as 12 New Glenn launches this year, and as many as 100 launches per year in the longer term.

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Interlune wins $6.9M from NASA to analyze lunar gases

Interlune engineers working with hardware in Regolith Lab
Interlune engineers Alex Lewandowski and Jessica Wu check test equipment in the company's Regolith Lab. (Interlune Photo)

NASA has awarded a $6.9 million contract to Seattle-based Interlune for the development of a system that can extract gases such as helium-3 and hydrogen from lunar soil and rocks.

The system will be developed and tested on Earth under the terms of an 18-month Small Business Innovation Research Phase III grant, and then launched to the moon on a commercial robotic lander in 2028. Interlune says the project meshes with its plan to extract and market lunar helium-3 for applications on Earth ranging from quantum computing and medical imaging to neutron detection and commercial nuclear fusion.

“We’re gathering data and advancing technologies that serve multiple purposes across industry and government,” Rob Meyerson, co-founder and CEO of Interlune, said today in a news release. “NASA’s continued investment in space technology enables technology development projects like this one to ensure America’s leadership in building the lunar economy.”

Interlune’s payload will include a robotic arm and scoop to gather up moon dirt (technically known as regolith), a particle-sorting device, hardware for heating up lunar material and harvesting the gases that are given off, a multispectral camera capable of determining helium-3 concentrations, and a mass spectrometer that can analyze the gases.

“For the first time ever, we will measure volatile gases by heating lunar regolith while on the moon, dramatically advancing the scientific community’s understanding of its properties,” Interlune chief scientist Elizabeth Frank said. “The data we collect will also tell us how much power is needed to extract resources like helium-3.”

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PowerLight uses a laser beam to keep military drone aloft

Powerlight laser system on left, laser-powered drone on the right
PowerLight's laser system (at left) beamed power to the military drone shown at right. (PowerLight Photos)

Kent, Wash.-based PowerLight Technologies says its laser power beaming system has been used successfully to keep a military-grade, fixed-wing drone in the air for hours during a series of tests for the Department of Defense.

The flight demonstrations concluded this month at the Poinsett Electronic Combat Range at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C. The tests were conducted in partnership with Kraus Hamdani Aerospace, sponsored by U.S. Central Command and the Pentagon’s Operational Energy – Innovation Directorate.

PowerLight’s system was installed on a KHA K1000ULE drone, which operates under a $270 million deployment contract from the AFCENT Battle Lab. The tests demonstrated end-to-end operation of a kilowatt-class wireless power system, from target acquisition and precision tracking through beam delivery and safety management.

During the tests, the beaming system acquired and tracked the drone at altitudes up to 5,000 feet, delivering power while steering and focusing the infrared laser beam in real time.

PowerLight, formerly known as LaserMotive, started out more than 15 years ago with power-beaming systems capable of keeping small quadcopters in the air continuously. The latest tests marked the first demonstration of a wireless system capable of sustained, autonomous power delivery at operationally relevant ranges and power levels for a large, fixed-wing military drone.

Currently, such drones must land to refuel or recharge once their onboard power source is depleted. Continuous wireless power could theoretically keep them airborne indefinitely.

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Blue Origin aces rocket reuse, but satellite goes awry

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket rises from its Florida pad
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket rises from its Florida pad, sending an AST SpaceMobile satellite into space. (Blue Origin via YouTube)

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture used a previously flown New Glenn rocket booster to send a satellite into space today, marking a first for the company.

It was also New Glenn’s first launch failure.

The first-stage booster — nicknamed “Never Tell Me the Odds” — made its second successful touchdown on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean, drawing cheers from the Blue Origin team. But hours later, AST SpaceMobile said that its BlueBird 7 satellite was not deployed into its intended orbit.

“BlueBird 7 was placed into a lower than planned orbit by the upper stage of the launch vehicle,” the Texas-based company said in a news release. “While the satellite separated from the launch vehicle and powered on, the altitude is too low to sustain operations with its onboard thruster technology and will [be] deorbited. The cost of the satellite is expected to be recovered under the company’s insurance policy.”

The rocket lifted off from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 7:25 a.m. ET (4:25 a.m. PT). The twice-used booster made its first flight last November when it launched NASA’s Escapade probes on a mission to Mars. Blue Origin’s Florida team recovered and refurbished the booster for today’s launch.

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Muon detectives share the Breakthrough Prize glory

David Hertzog with muon storage ring at Fermilab
University of Washington physicist David Hertzog checks out the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab in 2018. (Photo Courtesy of David Hertzog)

University of Washington physicist David Hertzog can’t wait to find out how hundreds of researchers who worked on a geeky project known as the Muon g-2 Collaboration will react when they hear they’ve each won thousands of dollars for that work.

The money is coming from this year’s $3 million Breakthrough Prize for fundamental physics, which was awarded tonight during a gala ceremony in Los Angeles. Hertzog and his colleagues decided that the prize should be divided equally among everyone who was an author on research papers relating to the decades-long series of muon experiments.

“There are students who were in and out of this thing — two years or less,” he said. “They’re going to be shocked out of their lives about something they did a long time ago that they don’t remember doing. They’re going to get a phone call or email from the Breakthrough people, and they’re going to go, ‘What!?’ That’s kind of fun.”

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Quantum computing gets its day in the spotlight

Facade of IonQ's quantum computer factory in Bothell, Wash.
Washington state funding will support the expansion of IonQ's quantum computer factory in Bothell, Wash. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

Leaders of the Pacific Northwest’s computing community gathered in downtown Seattle today to mark World Quantum Day — and Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson gave them one more reason to celebrate. Or rather, 500,000 reasons.

Ferguson took the occasion to announce that $500,000 would be directed from the Governor’s Economic Development Strategic Reserve Fund to support the expansion of IonQ’s quantum computer manufacturing facility in Bothell, Wash. The 100,000-square-foot factory opened in 2024 and is ramping up production.

Over the next 18 months, Maryland-based IonQ plans to add about 100 engineering positions in Bothell, paying an average salary of $177,000. Over the next five years, the expansion is projected to generate between 1,200 and 2,000 regional jobs.

The Strategic Reserve Fund makes use of unclaimed lottery prize money for investments that deliver significant job creation and capital investment in Washington state. The newly announced award will go to the Economic Alliance of Snohomish County for building upgrades, workforce expenses and other expansion costs.

The state’s funding is coming on top of more than $14 million in private investment. “Quantum is the future, and it’s being built here,” Ferguson said in a news release.

The news was greeted with applause at Northwest Quantum Day, an all-day conference presented by Northwest Quantum Nexus and co-hosted by K&L Gates.

April 14 is marked as World Quantum Day for a geeky reason: The date (4/14) commemorates one of the foundational numbers of quantum mechanics, Planck’s constant (4.14 X 10-15 eV ⋅ s).

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Round-the-moon mission ends with a triumphant splash

Aerial view of Orion spacecraft splashing into the Pacific Ocean beneath parachutes
NASA’s Orion spacecraft splashes into the Pacific Ocean, as seen in an overhead view. (NASA via YouTube)

Four astronauts and their Orion space capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean today, bringing the first crewed trip around the moon and back since 1972 to a successful end.

“What a journey!” mission commander Reid Wiseman said moments after splashdown.

During their 10-day odyssey, the crew of NASA’s Artemis 2 mission — Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — became the most distant human travelers in history, swinging more than 4,000 miles past the moon’s far side. Koch is the first woman to venture beyond Earth orbit, Glover is the first Black astronaut to do so, and Hansen is the first non-U.S. astronaut to make such a trip.

The flight tested the Artemis program’s hardware and procedures to prepare the way for sending astronauts all the way to the lunar surface by as early as 2028, and for building a lunar base in the 2030s.

“It’s the most important human spaceflight mission I think we’ve done in many decades, in terms of what it meant historically, but also what it means for the future of the agency,” NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said at a post-splashdown news conference.

Orion’s hardware — including components built in the Seattle area — came through when it counted. Two sets of thrusters for Orion were built by L3Harris’ Aerojet Rocketdyne team in Redmond, Wash., while mechanisms that were made by Karman Space & Defense in Mukilteo, Wash., facilitated the safe deployment of Orion’s parachutes in the mission’s final minutes.

NASA calculated that Orion traveled 700,237 miles in all, from its launch atop a massive Space Launch System rocket on April 1 to its splashdown off the coast of California at 5:07 p.m. PT.

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Artemis 2’s trip around the moon enters the home stretch

Image from Orion: Engine and thrusters in foreground, Earth in background
A view from one of Orion's cameras shows the spacecraft's engines in the foreground and Earth in the background. (NASA via YouTube)

The crew of NASA’s round-the-moon test mission crossed the halfway point between the moon and Earth today on their homeward journey — and they’re picking up speed as they zero in on a spot off the coast of California for a live-streamed splashdown on April 10.

At the end of what so far has been a successful Artemis 2 mission, the astronauts are counting on the Orion space capsule’s propulsion system, heat shield and parachutes to work perfectly.

“We’re going to come into the atmosphere at almost 40 times the speed of sound, and then we will slow down to a 20-mile-an-hour touchdown into the Pacific,” NASA pilot Victor Glover told members of Congress today during a space-to-ground Q&A. “The heat shield and the parachutes are going to get us nice and slow. … We can’t wait to see the dive team and the Navy that are going to pick us up.”

Glover and his crewmates — mission commander Reid Wiseman, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — have been testing Orion’s systems during a mission aimed at preparing the way for a lunar landing that could take place as early as 2028. Their 10-day trip is the first time humans have gone around the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.

Artemis 2 lead flight director Jeff Radigan was asked during a news briefing how Orion’s entry and descent would compare with the “Seven Minutes of Terror” experienced by NASA’s Curiosity rover during its 2012 Mars landing.

“It’s 13 minutes of things that have to go right,” said Radigan, referring to the time period between the start of atmospheric entry and splashdown. Then he amended his remarks. “It’s not 13 minutes,” he said. “It’s an hour and a half of things that have to go right.”

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Portal Space gets a $50M boost for faster space mobility

Illustration: Portal's Starburst and Supernova vehicles in Earth orbit
An artist's conception shows Portal’s Starburst and Supernova spacecraft in Earth orbit. (Portal Space Systems Illustration)

Bothell, Wash.-based Portal Space Systems has raised $50 million in a funding round aimed at speeding up development of the Seattle-area startup’s highly maneuverable space vehicles.

The first such vehicle, Starburst-1, is due for launch as early as this fall as a payload on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 satellite rideshare mission. Portal is also getting ready to move into a 52,000-square-foot manufacturing facility where future Starburst spacecraft and even more capable Supernova space vehicles will be built.

Portal CEO Jeff Thornburg — who co-founded the company in 2021 following stints at tech ventures including SpaceX and Stratolaunch Systems — characterized the newly announced Series A funding round as closer to a giant leap than a small step.

“The thing that’s exciting me the most, and really the company at large, is that it helps us move faster,” he told me. “We’re obviously focused on getting Starburst and Supernova capabilities demonstrated and available to our customers as quickly as we can.”

The round was led by Geodesic Capital and Mach33, with participation by Booz Allen Ventures, AlleyCorp and FUSE. It builds on a $17.5 million seed round that was announced last year.

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