Cosmic Log
Stoke Space says it has raised roughly $1 billion to get ready for the first launch of its fully reusable Nova rocket — and to scale up the rocket’s design for even bigger payloads.
To accommodate its grander ambitions, the Kent, Wash.-based startup is also scaling up its test facility in Moses Lake, 175 miles to the east.
“We have confidence in the foundation that we’ve laid today, and now it’s time to scale,” Stoke Space CEO Andy Lapsa told me.
California-based Cowboy Space is leasing a 291,035-square-foot industrial facility in Kent, Wash., to support the production of hardware for its planned constellation of AI data center satellites, according to the company that arranged the lease.
“According to Newmark Research, the transaction is the largest industrial lease in the Puget Sound region year-to-date,” Newmark, the real estate broker for the deal, said in a news release. Newmark represented CenterPoint Properties, Cowboy’s new landlord.
The facility at 7650 S. 228th St. previously served as a Costco distribution center. “This building was originally designed for large-scale logistics users, but Cowboy Space recognized the opportunity to reimagine it as a highly specialized production facility,” said Taylor Hoff, a vice chairman at Newmark’s office in Bellevue, Wash.
Newmark said Cowboy Space plans to convert the facility into a manufacturing operation supporting space and rocket development. The operation is expected to add 300 jobs, Newmark said. Cowboy is currently listing 46 Kent-based positions in its careers database.
REDMOND, Wash. — NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman came to Rocketdyne’s facility here today to give a pep talk to the space company’s employees — and lay out his vision for the future of America’s space effort. Isaacman made clear that nuclear power will be a big part of that vision.
“NASA is at our best when we’re doing the near-impossible,” he said. “There is no obvious revenue model or business case for what we’re doing. We’re just out there pursuing the secrets of the universe, and nuclear or fission-powered spacecraft make sense in that it helps us extend our reach farther into the solar system.”
The pathfinder mission for NASA’s nuclear ambitions is likely to be SR-1 Freedom, a Mars probe that’s scheduled for launch in 2028. SR-1 Freedom is designed to carry a fission reactor and nuclear electric propulsion system.
Rocketdyne’s Redmond facility is working on thrusters for the system. “We built here, in Redmond, the Advanced Electric Propulsion System,” Rocketdyne CEO Kristin Houston told GeekWire before Isaacman’s talk. “It’s a 12-kilowatt Hall-thruster system, and that is going to be the propulsion element on the SR-1 Freedom. So, yeah, we’re really proud of that.”
Today’s visit was part of the Pacific Northwest leg of Isaacman’s nationwide “Inspiration Tour,” aimed at strengthening the connections between NASA and its partners.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has won a contract worth up to $700 million to boost NASA’s telecommunications capability in Martian orbit, using a version of the company’s Blue Ring multi-mission space platform.
The contract calls on Blue Origin to deliver a high-performance Mars telecommunications orbiter to NASA by the end of 2028, the space agency said in a news release. Blue Origin would also be charged with operating the Mars telecommunications network as part of NASA’s broader space communications and navigation infrastructure.
Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said the Blue Ring spacecraft for the mission was already in production in Huntsville, Alabama. “Before the first human steps on Mars, we have to build the road. … MTO will enable science, carry payloads, and help lay the foundation for human exploration,” he said in a post to X.
The National Science Foundation has awarded a $1.2 million grant to Tukwila, Wash.-based Juno Propulsion to support the startup’s development of a non-toxic propulsion system for in-space applications.
The two-year Phase II project, funded through NSF’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, will be conducted in partnership with the University of Washington and UW Professor Carl Knowlen’s lab. The focus of the funding is to support work on Juno’s Product Development Unit (PDU), which uses rotating detonation rocket engine technology.
By combining high-efficiency propulsion with non-toxic propellants, Juno aims to enable spacecraft to maneuver farther and faster while reducing the risks associated with traditional toxic propellants. Work on the PDU is intended to advance Juno’s system to Technology Readiness Level 8, positioning it near production-ready status on the standard 1-to-9 TRL scale.
A Seattle-area nonprofit group known as the Fermi Explorer Mission today unveiled its plans to send a spacecraft on an 80,000-year trip to the nearest alien star system, Alpha Centauri.
If the mission goes as planned, it would mark a milestone for interstellar flight. But Philip Johnston, the group’s co-founder and president, doesn’t expect Fermi Explorer to be humanity’s first visitor to Alpha Centauri. He’s counting on our descendants to figure out faster ways to travel between now and the year 82026.
“We’ll be the first to leave, and the last to arrive,” he said.
The robotic spacecraft won’t be powered by antimatter, dilithium crystals or other science-fiction standbys for traveling between stars. Instead, it will depend on a tried-and-true solar electric propulsion system to build up speed for the 4.4-light-year trip.
Johnston and his teammates laid out the mission requirements for a bidding process that aims to keep the cost of designing, building, launching and operating the probe below $15 million. They’re also soliciting contributions, with launch targeted by the end of 2029.
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.
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.
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.”
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.”