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Stratolaunch’s prototype rocket plane goes supersonic

Stratolaunch carrier airplane deploys TA-1 test vehicle for air launch
Stratolaunch’s carrier airplane releases the TA-1 test vehicle for launch. (Stratolaunch via Vimeo)

Chalk up another milestone for Stratolaunch, the air-launch venture created by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen: The company’s mammoth airplane deployed a winged test vehicle for its first rocket-powered flight.

Stratolaunch’s single-use TA-1 test vehicle blazed a trail for future reusable hypersonic test vehicles that are expected to help the U.S. military catch up on one of the frontiers of aerial combat. TA-1 went supersonic, according to Zachary Krevor, Stratolaunch’s president and CEO — but based on his comments, it may not have quite hit the hypersonic standard of five times the speed of sound.

“While I can’t share the specific altitude and speed TA-1 reached due to proprietary agreements with our customers, we are pleased to share that in addition to meeting all primary and customer objectives of the flight, we reached high supersonic speeds approaching Mach 5 and collected a great amount of data at an incredible value to our customers,” Krevor said today in a news release.

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Scientists back AI principles for biomolecular design

Visualization of protein molecule
AI technologies now allow scientists to generate biomolecules unlike any seen in nature. (Illustration by Ian C. Haydon / UW IPD)

More than 90 researchers — including a Nobel laureate — have signed on to a call for the scientific community to follow a set of safety and security standards when using artificial intelligence to design synthetic proteins.

The community statement on the responsible development of AI for protein design is being unveiled today in Boston at Winter RosettaCon 2024, a conference focusing on biomolecular engineering. The statement follows up on an AI safety summit that was convened last October by the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

“I view this as a crucial step for the scientific community,” the institute’s director, David Baker, said in a news release. “The responsible use of AI for protein design will unlock new vaccines, medicines and sustainable materials that benefit the world. As scientists, we must ensure this happens while also minimizing the chance that our tools could ever be misused to cause harm.”

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Blue Origin targets 2025 for its first moon landing

Illustration: Blue Moon lander on lunar surface, with Earth in background
An artist’s conception shows Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 lander on the moon. (Blue Origin Illustration)

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is aiming to send an uncrewed lander to the surface of the moon in the next 12 to 16 months, according to the executive in charge of the development program.

John Couluris, senior vice president for lunar permanence at Blue Origin, provided an update on the company’s moon lander program on CBS’ “60 Minutes” news program on March 3.

“We’re expecting to land on the moon between 12 and 16 months from today,” Couluris said. “I understand I’m saying that publicly, but that’s what our team is aiming towards.”

Couluris was referring to a pathfinder version of Blue Origin’s nearly three-story-tall Blue Moon Mark 1 cargo lander, which is taking shape at Blue Origin’s production facility in Huntsville, Ala. The Pathfinder Mission would demonstrate the MK1’s capabilities — including its hydrogen-fueled BE-7 engine, its precision landing system and its ability to deliver up to 3 tons of payload anywhere on the moon.

Blue Origin envisions building multiple cargo landers, as well as a crewed version of the Blue Moon lander that could transport NASA astronauts to and from the lunar surface.

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Computer scientist goes from stunt flying to a startup

Cecilia Aragon
Computer scientist Cecilia Aragon tells her life story at the Women’s Leadership Conference. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

BELLEVUE, Wash. — Three decades ago, Cecilia Aragon made aviation history as the first Latina to earn a place on the U.S. Unlimited Aerobatic Team.

She went on to write a book about it, titled “Flying Free.”

Today, she’s still flying free, as a professor and data scientist in the University of Washington — and as the co-founder of a Seattle startup that aims to commercialize her research.

Aragon recounted her personal journey today during a talk at the Women’s Leadership Conference, presented by the Bellevue Chamber. The conference brought nearly 400 attendees to Bellevue’s Meydenbauer Center to hear about topics ranging from financial literacy to sports management.

Aragon’s aerobatic days began in 1985, when she accepted an invitation from a co-worker to take a ride in his flying club’s Piper Cherokee airplane. “The first thing I thought was, ‘I’m the person who’s scared of climbing a stepladder. I’m scared of going in an elevator,’” she recalled.

But then she thought of her Chilean-born father. “I heard my father’s voice, saying, ‘What is stopping you from doing whatever you want?” she said. She swallowed her fears, climbed into the plane, and was instantly hooked.

“It’s so gorgeous to fly out into the water and see the sun glinting up on the water, like a million gold coins,” she said. “And when we got down to the ground, I said, ‘I want to take flying lessons. I want to be the pilot of my own life.’”

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First Mode’s clean-tech factory uses smart tech as well

Ribbon-cutting ceremony at First Mode factory
First Mode CEO Julian Soles wields a giant scissors at a factory ribbon-cutting ceremony with Washington Gov. Jay Inslee to the right and Albert Gore, executive director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association, to the left. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

There’s not much that’s bolted down the floor of the 40,000-square-foot factory in Seattle’s SoDo district where First Mode plans to build powertrain conversion kits for mining trucks — and that’s by design.

“The factory itself represents the latest in smart manufacturing,” First Mode CEO Julian Soles said during today’s ribbon-cutting ceremony, with Washington Gov. Jay Inslee in attendance. “It’s ‘software-defined’ rather than a hard-point-constrained facility. Nearly every components shelf and assembly sequence is digitized for maximum speed and data management.”

If the production requirements change, the floor plan can change accordingly. First Mode is also taking advantage of digital tools for tracking the supply chain.

“Every workstation, every inventory location, every product that moves through the facility is equipped with a bar code and has a digital twin,” Philipp Nonnast, senior global supply manager for First Mode, explained during a factory tour.

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Jeff Bezos gets revved up over New Glenn rocket’s rise

Two men look at New Glenn
Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp and founder Jeff Bezos get a look at New Glenn. (Blue Origin via LinkedIn)

For the first time, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture lifted up an orbital-class New Glenn rocket on its Florida launch pad — with the billionaire boss keeping watch.

“Just incredible to see New Glenn on the pad at LC-36,” Bezos wrote today in an Instagram post that referred to Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. “Big year ahead. Let’s go!”

Blue Origin’s CEO, Dave Limp, agreed that the sight was incredible.

“Its size alone — more than 30 stories high and a 7-meter diameter fairing with 487 cubic meters of capacity — is humbling,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post.

The rocket-raising party marked the climax of New Glenn’s first-ever rollout. “Pending weather, the vehicle will remain on the pad for at least a week for a series of tanking tests, including flowing cryogenic fluids for the first time,” Limp said.

But this pathfinder rocket isn’t destined for liftoff. The coming round of tests will be conducted without New Glenn’s BE-4 rocket engines, which are powered by liquefied natural gas and have been going through tests in Huntsville, Ala., and at Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in Texas. Eventually, the rocket will be rolled off the pad — and then an engine-equipped version, incorporating components from the test vehicle’s first stage, will be prepared for launch.

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Scientists take a freeze-frame look at excited electrons

Illustration: X-ray pulses blasting water molecules
Scientists used a pair of X-ray pulses (shown in pink and green) to study the energetic response of electrons (gold) in liquid water on attosecond time scales, while the hydrogen (white) and oxygen (red) atoms are ‘frozen’ in time. (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory / Nathan Johnson)

An international team of scientists has blazed a new trail for studying how atoms respond to radiation, by tracking the energetic movement of electrons when a sample of liquid water is blasted with X-rays.

The experiment, described in this week’s issue of the journal Science, required “freezing” the motion of the atoms with which the electrons were associated, on a scale of mere attoseconds. An attosecond is one-quintillionth of a second — or, expressed another way, a millionth of a trillionth of a second.

Attosecond-scale observations could provide scientists with new insights into how radiation exposure affects objects and people.

“What happens to an atom when it is struck by ionizing radiation, like an X-ray? Seeing the earliest stages of this process has long been a missing piece in understanding how radiation affects matter,” Xiaosong Li, a chemistry professor at the University of Washington and a laboratory fellow at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, said in a UW news release. “This new technique for the first time shows us that missing piece and opens the door to seeing the steps where so much complex — and interesting — chemistry occurs!”

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IonQ opens the doors to its quantum computer factory

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)

BOTHELL, Wash. — IonQ’s quantum computer factory is still ramping up to full operation, but the company is already expanding its footprint by tens of thousands of square feet.

A year ago, when IonQ revealed its plans to create a new kind of research and manufacturing facility in the Seattle area, the idea was to use roughly 65,000 square feet of space on two floors of a three-story building in Bothell that once housed offices for AT&T Wireless.

“We’re happy to announce today we’ve taken the third floor, so we have the entire building now,” IonQ CEO Peter Chapman said during a ribbon-cutting ceremony. “So, a 50% increase in our footprint in one year. … Now we’re up to about 100,000 square feet in the building.”

IonQ considers its Bothell facility to be the first dedicated quantum computer manufacturing facility in the United States. The building will house the company’s research and development team — and also serve as IonQ’s second quantum data center, following in the footsteps of its Maryland HQ.

Chapman said it cost about $20 million to upgrade the building’s infrastructure for IonQ’s purposes.

“We now have, in the Seattle area, about 80 people at IonQ,” he said. “A year ago, we had something less than that — a handful. So, we’re growing quickly in the Seattle area. And I expect that in this next year, we will invest probably somewhere close to $80 million in the Seattle area, which will go to our promise of investing a billion dollars over the next 10 years.”

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Interlune raises funds to go after the moon’s resources

Rob Meyerson
Space industry executive Rob Meyerson speaks at a 2016 conference. (ISPCS via YouTube)

A stealthy space venture co-founded by the former president of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says it’s raising funds to move ahead with its plan to harvest resources on the moon and bring them back for use on Earth.

Former Blue Origin executive Rob Meyerson is listed among the executive officers for Interlune in a financial form filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Feb. 1. The form reports that the startup is offering $17.7 million in equity, and that $15.6 million of that total was sold as of the filing date.

The SEC filing says 18 investors have taken part in the offering but does not identify those investors.

Interlune was founded in 2020, but details about the venture were shrouded in secrecy until last October — when another co-founder, Blue Origin engineer Gary Lai, discussed the company’s vision during an awards banquet at Seattle’s Museum of Flight.

“We aim to be the first company that harvests natural resources from the moon to use here on Earth,” Lai told the audience. “We’re building a completely novel approach to extract those resources, efficiently, cost-effectively and also responsibly. The goal is really to create a sustainable in-space economy.”

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Quindar raises $6M to automate satellite management

Screenshots of Quindar's satellite control dashboard
Screenshots show Quindar’s spacecraft management platform at work. (Image via Quindar)

A space-centric startup called Quindar says it has successfully closed an oversubscribed $6 million funding round that will give a boost to its cloud-hosted, AI-supported software platform for satellite management.

The seed extension round was led by the Seattle-area venture capital firm Fuse, with continuing investment from Y Combinator and Funders Club. The round builds upon last year’s initial seed round and brings total funding to date to $8.5 million, Quindar CEO and co-founder Nate Hamet told GeekWire in an email.

“The infusion of funding will propel our mission to manage satellites as efficiently as servers by utilizing AI-driven insights and operations to revolutionize the industry’s approach to spacecraft management,” Quindar said today in an announcement about the investment round.

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