Category: GeekWire

Categories
GeekWire

Starcloud raises $250M more for orbital data centers

Illustration showing Earth's disk with a satellite circling over it
Nvidia’s next-generation AI chip, the Space-1 Vera Rubin Module, is set to be used on Starcloud’s future satellites. (Nvidia Illustration)

Starcloud says it has raised $250 million in new funding to support the creation of a constellation of data center satellites powered by Nvidia’s next-generation AI chips.

The Series A extension funding round was led by Manhattan West, with participation from existing investors including Benchmark, EQT, Soma, NFX and 776. Among the new investors joining for this round are Nvidia, Cisco Investments, Cedar Capital, Goanna Capital and Standard Capital.

Founded in 2024, Starcloud is headquartered in Redmond, Wash., and is building production lines for its Starcloud-3 spacecraft at a new 100,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Woodinville, Wash. The newly announced round brings the startup’s total capital raised to $450 million, with a post-money valuation of $2.3 billion.

Nvidia’s participation in the funding round brings Starcloud’s collaboration with the computer-chip titan to a new level. In November 2025, Starcloud flew Nvidia’s H100 GPU to orbit for the first time. It used the chip to train a large language model called NanoGPT — marking a milestone in space-based AI data processing.

Starcloud plans to equip future satellites with Nvidia’s Space-1 Vera Rubin Module, which Nvidia says will deliver 25 times as much in-space compute capability as the H100. Starcloud’s satellites will serve as an early flight platform for the space-rated chips.

Get the full story on GeekWire
Categories
GeekWire

Get a sneak peek at Portal Space Systems’ first satellite

Portal CEO Jeff Thornburg stretching out arms as he shows off Starburst-1 satellite in lab
Portal Space Systems CEO Jeff Thornburg shows off the Starburst-1 satellite in the company’s Bothell lab. (Portal Space Systems Photo)

BOTHELL, Wash. — Portal Space Systems is getting ready to send its first Starburst spacecraft to Florida for a milestone launch, and at the same time is fleshing out its plans for launching an even more capable spacecraft known as Supernova.

Both spacecraft are designed to offer rapid maneuverability in orbit at low cost, and both will take advantage of Portal’s core technologies, supply chains and manufacturing processes. But Supernova will be heavier than Starburst (1,100 pounds vs. 600 pounds) and will make use of an innovative solar thermal propulsion system to move within a wider range of orbits.

Seventeen months after the official opening of Portal’s 8,000-square-foot development and testing lab in Bothell, I was invited back to the facility to get a peek at Starburst-1 — and get a sense of how far the startup has come.

Get the full story on GeekWire
Categories
GeekWire

Zeno gets a chance to use its nuclear heater on the moon

Illustration: Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander on moon's surface with radioisotope heater unit highlighted by blue glow
An artist's conception shows Firefly's Blue Ghost lander on the moon's surface during the lunar night, with Zeno Power Systems' radioisotope heater unit highlighted by a blue glow on the left side of the lander's top deck. (Firefly Aerospace Illustration)

A nuclear-powered heater built by Zeno Power Systems is slated to fly to the moon aboard Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander for a demonstration mission that could take place as early as 2028.

Zeno’s Seattle engineering hub played a leading role in developing the radioisotope heater unit, which will be powered by americium-241, a radioactive isotope typically recovered from recycled nuclear material.

The unit will provide 5 watts of thermal energy — enough to sustain the lander through the lunar night, which lasts 14 Earth days. Firefly’s first solar-powered Blue Ghost lander, which touched down on the moon in March 2025, operated successfully through the lunar day but gave up the ghost shortly after sunset.

“Our first Blue Ghost mission gave us firsthand insight into the moon’s extreme thermal environment, where we measured temperatures ranging from more than 230 degrees F during the lunar day to below -275 degrees F at night,” Ray Allensworth, Firefly’s vice president of spacecraft, said today in a news release. “Now we’re looking forward to advancing technologies that can extend missions beyond sunset and support long-duration surface operations required for NASA’s Moon Base initiative and the growing lunar economy.”

Get the full story on GeekWire
Categories
GeekWire

Blue Origin unveils its Quartz network of ground stations

Bulb-shaped radio antenna dome with ocean in background
Blue Origin’s ground station network includes a radio antenna in Bermuda. (Blue Origin Photo)

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says it has successfully tested the first three ground stations for a global communications network that will support the company’s missions in Earth orbit and beyond.

The Quartz network’s first ground stations are in Bermuda, New Zealand and Australia. Blue Origin says the network is due to expand to nine sites by the end of the year.

“Ground communications infrastructure has historically been one of the most fragmented and costly elements of space operations, for national security programs, civil and commercial operators alike,” Tory Bruno, president of national security at Blue Origin, said today in a news release. “With Quartz, we’ve built a single, fully integrated network that changes that equation. One interface, one operations team, transparent pricing and a security architecture built to meet the most demanding mission requirements.”

Get the full story on GeekWire
Categories
GeekWire

K2 Space raises $500M to build big, powerful satellites

K2 Space's Gravitas satellite undergoing integration on a shop floor
K2 Space’s Gravitas satellite, shown here during final integration, was launched in March. (K2 Space Photo via PRNewswire)

K2 Space, a California-based satellite company that recently set up an engineering hub in Seattle, has announced a $500 million funding round at a $6.8 billion valuation.

The Series D round was led by Kleiner Perkins and ICONIQ, with participation from CapitalG, Lightspeed, Altimeter, Spark Capital, Sands Capital, ARK Invest, T. Rowe Price Associates and other existing investors.

Since its founding in 2022, K2 Space has raised more than $1 billion in capital and secured an equivalent amount in contracts.

While many satellite companies focus on miniaturization, K2 Space is going big on satellite mass and power. K2 had its first “mega-class” satellite, dubbed Gravitas, launched into orbit on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in March. The two-ton, 20-kilowatt satellite carried a dozen undisclosed payload modules for multiple customers, including the Department of Defense.

Get the full story on GeekWire
Categories
GeekWire

Partners plan to make machines for moon construction

Interlune prototype excavator being tested on rocky patch of land
Interlune and Vermeer worked together to test a full-scale prototype of an excavator with auxiliary components. (Interlune / Vermeer Photo)

Seattle-based Interlune is expanding its partnership with Vermeer, an Iowa-based industrial equipment manufacturer, to develop construction tools for use on the moon.

The two companies forged their initial strategic partnership to further Interlune’s plans to extract helium-3 from tons of moon dirt and rocks, also known as regolith. Their full-scale prototype of a lunar excavator was unveiled a little more than a year ago.

At the time, Interlune was focused on mining helium-3 and bringing it back to Earth for applications ranging from quantum computing to medical imaging and nuclear fusion. But a major shift came in March when NASA announced a 10-year, $30 billion initiative to build the infrastructure for a moon base.

Interlune co-founder and CEO Rob Meyerson said he and his teammates realized that the partnership with Vermeer could support NASA’s plans. “We went back to Vermeer … and we decided that it made sense to formally expand the partnership to focus on all these other things that we’ve had in mind,” Meyerson told me.

For example, a lunar construction project is likely to involve building roads, compacting surfaces, digging trenches for underground utilities and moving rocks to clear space for a habitat. Heavy equipment might be needed to build protective berms around nuclear reactors.

Vermeer’s president and CEO, Jason Andringa, said he’s up for the challenge. He noted that before taking charge of the business his grandfather founded nearly 80 years ago, he was a staff engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“When I left NASA and came to work for Vermeer, my hope always was to be able to re-merge my passion for aerospace, specifically for the human exploration and human colonization of the moon and Mars, with my coming back to my family business … and use what I knew Vermeer was best at on Earth to do important work on the moon and Mars,” he told me.

Get the full story on GeekWire
Categories
GeekWire

Sophia Space wins a patent for cool orbital data centers

Illustration: Data center satellite in orbit
An artist’s conception shows a data center satellite that makes use of Sophia Space’s tile-based architecture. (Sophia Space Illustration)

Sophia Space has secured a patent for a technology that could pave the way for solar-powered orbital data centers that passively radiate excess heat into space.

Developed in partnership with Caltech, Sophia’s architecture tackles a major hurdle in orbital computing: how to cool thousands of chips running artificial intelligence applications in space.

Traditional designs rely on satellite-wide radiator systems with heat pumps and circulating fluids. In contrast, Sophia plans to build flat, modular tiles equipped with four processors each. The tiles draw power from solar cells on their sunlit side, and shed heat into the cold vacuum of space from their dark side.

This approach avoids having to put a cooling system in the central bus of every satellite, said Leon Alkalai, Sophia Space’s co-founder, chairman and chief technology officer. “I think you will find in time that our approach is much more favorable when we scale to larger wattage systems, because bringing everything into a bus can only be done until a certain level, and then it becomes almost impossible to do,” he told me. “Our benefit is really scalability.”

Get the full story on GeekWire
Categories
GeekWire

How unorthodox routes can lead to the space frontier

Joydeep Hazra holding up a prototype Mars rover while fellow panelists look on at Seattle Tech Week session
Joydeep Hazra, program director for electric vehicles at South Seattle College, holds up a prototype Mars rover during a Seattle Tech Week session. He’s surrounded by, from left, Alec Courtright, technical program manager at EarthDaily Federal, Anjali Roychowdhury, lead software engineer at SpaceX; Kayla VanderPutten, technical recruiter at Anduril Industries; and moderator Amy Miller, head of people and talent at Portal Space Systems. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

The road to space isn’t always a straight line. Sometimes, the itinerary for a career in the space industry begins with years of experience in other tech fields. And sometimes, it starts at an espresso stand.

“I actually started as a barista at SpaceX, and I somehow got recruited to go build Starlink satellites,” Kayla VanderPutten, a technical recruiter at Anduril Industries, said Monday at a downtown Seattle Tech Week session focusing on the intersection of space and technology. “I don’t know why they let me do that, but I was there for the first 500 satellites before I transitioned into recruiting.”

Over the course of 25 years, Joydeep Hazra’s career path took him through a series of jobs in telecommunications and network engineering, including management positions at Nokia, Mavenir and TRIDENTX. Now he’s the manager of a federally funded program focusing on electric vehicles at South Seattle College — and he’s getting involved in aerospace as well.

Get the full story on GeekWire
Categories
GeekWire

Amazon plans 5,105 satellites for mobile connectivity

Campers looking at smartphone with tent and streams of Leo logos in background
An illustration shows campers using a smartphone to connect with a stylized Amazon Leo satellite network. (Amazon Photoillustration)

Amazon Leo has asked the Federal Communications Commission to approve its plan to launch up to 5,105 satellites capable of providing space-based connectivity for mobile devices.

“Our plan is to start deploying in 2028, and we’re excited to work with partners to make it happen,” Chris Weber, vice president of business and product for Amazon Leo, said on X.

The direct-to-device network, Amazon Leo D2D, would complement Amazon’s satellite network for high-speed internet service via fixed antennas. It would also leverage the existing direct-to-device network operated by Globalstar, which is in the midst of a merger with Amazon.

So far, more than 390 Amazon Leo satellites have been launched into low Earth orbit. Amazon says it plans to start rolling out commercial service later this year. The company plans to have 3,232 first-generation satellites in orbit by mid-2029, and the FCC has already given the go-ahead for more than 4,500 second-generation satellites that would give an extra boost to network coverage.

This latest move, which was expected ever since the plans for acquiring Globalstar were announced in April, aims to capitalize on the growing interest in direct-to-device connectivity.

Get the full story on GeekWire
Categories
GeekWire

NASA funds research into nuclear heaters for astronauts

Collage of illustrations highlighting NASA-funded research projects, including picture of astronaut working on moon with a glowing heater on backpack
This collage highlights some of the projects selected for funding through the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, including a study looking at radioisotope heating systems for moonwalking astronauts, depicted at center left. (NASA Graphic)

NASA says it’s funding a new batch of far-out research projects, including a study evaluating how radioactive heaters can keep astronauts warm while they work on the moon.

The heating project was proposed by Zeno Power Systems, a nuclear battery company with operations in Seattle, California and Washington, D.C. It’s one of 18 projects selected for nine-month, $175,000 Phase I grants by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program. For decades, NIAC grants have helped researchers test concepts with potential space applications.

Zeno’s research project is led by A.C. Charania, the company’s senior vice president of space business development. Charania previously spent two years as NASA’s chief technologist and five years in management roles at Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture.

The project comes with an acronym taken from J.R.R. Tolkien’s tales of Middle-earth: EARENDIL, which stands for Extended Astronaut Radioisotope-EVA in Nighttime and Deep-Space Icy Landscapes. In “The Silmarillion,” Eärendil is a half-Elven mariner who voyaged to the Undying Lands. As described in Zeno’s proposal, EARENDIL technology would warm space voyagers while they work outside during the frigid lunar night, amid temperatures that can plunge as low as 410 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (-246 degrees Celsius).

Zeno is already developing a new class of compact nuclear devices powered by the heat of radioactive decay. One type of device would convert that heat into electricity, but the device proposed for EARENDIL would function strictly as a heater rather than a battery.

Get the full story on GeekWire