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Interlune brings in more cash to get set for moon mining

Illustration: Interlune Harvester on the moon
An artist’s conception shows the Interlune Harvester on the lunar surface. (Interlune Illustration)

Seattle-based Interlune is raising additional investment to support its campaign to identify and extract resources on the moon that can be brought back to Earth, starting with helium-3.

The fundraising effort came to light in a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week. The $5 million offering takes the form of a Simple Agreement for Future Equity, or SAFE, a contractual arrangement in which investors have the right to receive equity in the company at a later time.

In its initial filing on Jan. 28, Interlune reported that $500,000 of the offering had been sold to a set of six investors. The filing didn’t identify the investors.

In an emailed statement, Interlune CEO Rob Meyerson said the SAFE funding would help support the company’s preparations for the lunar missions ahead.

“Interlune has elected to raise $5 million on a Simple Agreement for Future Equity from existing and new investors to advance key technical milestones ahead of its next priced round,” Meyerson said. “We have several significant projects in the works, which we’re excited to announce shortly.”

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Blue Origin plans ultra-fast satellite data network

TeraWave logo superimposed on picture of trees and night sky with star trails
Blue Origin has lifted the curtain on its plan for an ultra-high-speed satellite data network called TeraWave. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says it’ll be ramping up an ultra-high-speed satellite data network called TeraWave, which will compete with SpaceX’s Starlink network for business from data centers, large-scale enterprises and government customers.

The service appears to dovetail with Amazon Leo, the satellite-based broadband internet service that was Bezos’ brainchild while he served as Amazon’s CEO. Amazon Leo — previously known as Project Kuiper — promises downlink speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second (Gbps). In contrast, TeraWave is targeting higher-end data applications with symmetrical data speeds of up to 6 terabits per second (Tbps), a rate that’s 6,000 times faster.

In today’s announcement, Blue Origin said TeraWave’s constellation would consist of 5,408 laser-linked satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) and medium Earth orbit (MEO). It plans to start deploying satellites in late 2027, presumably using the company’s New Glenn rockets.

Blue Origin’s plans are discussed in an application and technical annex filed today with the Federal Communications Commission. In its application, the company is seeking waivers from several regulatory requirements in order to get TeraWave off the ground quickly.

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Starfish will set up disposal service for military satellites

Illustration: Starfish Space's Otter spacecraft near another satellite in orbit
An artist’s conception shows an Otter spacecraft in proximity to another satellite. (Starfish Space Illustration)

Starfish Space has secured a $52.5 million contract from the U.S. Space Force’s Space Development Agency to dispose of military satellites at the end of their operational lives.

The Tukwila, Wash.-based startup says it’s the first commercial deal ever struck to provide “deorbit-as-a-service,” or DaaS, for a satellite constellation in low Earth orbit. In this case, the constellation is the Pentagon’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, which provides global communications access and encrypted connectivity for military missions. The contract calls for Starfish Space to launch the satellite disposal service in 2027.

“This is not research and development. This is an actual service, in a structure that allows that service to scale for this constellation, for an entire industry,” Starfish Space co-founder Trevor Bennett told me. He said the arrangement validates the Space Development Agency’s approach to building and maintaining its constellation, and also validates “the path that we can take with the industry at large.”

Starfish is developing a spacecraft called Otter that would be able to capture other satellites, maneuver them into different orbits, release them and then move on. In a deorbiting scenario, Otter would send the target satellite into a trajectory for atmospheric re-entry that wouldn’t pose a risk to other orbital assets.

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NASA’s moon rocket makes the slow trip to its launch pad

Space Launch System rocket on its way to launch pad with "Drive Safely" sign in foreground
NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and its mobile launcher head for the launch pad at a top speed of 1 mph. (NASA Photo / Keegan Barber)

NASA’s massive Space Launch System rocket crept toward its Florida launch pad today at a top speed of about 1 mph, marking the first step in a journey that will eventually send astronauts around the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.

The 4-mile trek to Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center began at 7 a.m. ET (4 a.m. PT) and lasted until evening. Because the rocket with its mobile launcher stands more than 300 feet tall and weighs millions of pounds, the trip required the use of a crawler-transporter — the same vehicle used for the Apollo and space shuttle programs, now upgraded for NASA’s Artemis moon program.

Liftoff for the Artemis 2 mission could come as early as March, but there’s lots to be done in the weeks ahead. After today’s rollout, the mission team will conduct a thorough checkout of the Space Launch System and its Orion crew spacecraft. NASA also aims to conduct a “wet dress rehearsal,” during which the launch team will fuel the rocket and count down to roughly T-minus 30 seconds. (Update: The first such rehearsal took place on Feb. 2 but had to be called off at about T-minus 5 minutes due to a liquid hydrogen leak.)

“We have, I think, zero intention of communicating an actual launch date until we get through wet dress,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told reporters.

Artemis 2 is slated to send three NASA astronauts and one Canadian astronaut on a 10-day journey tracing a figure-8 route around the moon. The trip will take them as far as 4,800 miles beyond the lunar far side — farther out than any human has gone before.

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Decades-old rocket factory is in for a Rocketdyne rebrand

Aerojet Rocketdyne Redmond facility
Aerojet Rocketdyne engineer Matt Dawson processes rocket engines in Redmond, Wash. (Aerojet Rocketdyne Photo)

A decades-old rocket factory in Redmond, Wash., is due to be rebranded with a time-honored name: Rocketdyne.

If all goes according to plan, the facility will become part of a joint venture created under the terms of an $845 million deal involving L3Harris Technologies and AE Industrial Partners.

L3Harris took over the Redmond facility in 2023 when it acquired Aerojet Rocketdyne for $4.7 billion. Now L3Harris plans to sell a majority stake in its Space Propulsion and Power Systems business to AE Industrial, while retaining 40% ownership of the newly created Rocketdyne venture. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and other conditions.

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Startup has big plans for robotic arms powered by AI

Illustration: Spacecraft with robotic arms next to Hubble Space Telescope in orbit
An artist’s conception shows a spacecraft with robotic arms preparing to grapple the Hubble Space Telescope. (Orbital Robotics Illustration)

A space startup founded by veterans of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is recruiting partners in its quest to build robotic arms powered by artificial intelligence.

Founded in late 2024, Puyallup, Wash.-based Orbital Robotics is still in its infancy — but it has already raised about $310,000 in funding. Orbital Robotics CEO Aaron Borger told GeekWire that the company is working with a stealthy space venture on an orbital rendezvous project for the U.S. Space Force, with a series of demonstration missions scheduled in the next year and a half.

And that’s just the start: Borger and his teammates are trying to get traction for a plan that could give NASA’s aging Hubble Space Telescope a much-needed boost.

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This asteroid is spinning fast enough to set a record

Illustration: Fast-spinning asteroid surrounded by other space rocks
An artist’s conception zeroes in on asteroid 2025 MN45. (Credit: NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory / NOIRLab / SLAC / AURA / P. Marenfeld)

Astronomers say they’ve found an asteroid that spins faster than other space rocks of its size.

The asteroid, known as 2025 MN45, is nearly half a mile (710 meters) in diameter and makes a full rotation every 1.88 minutes, based on an analysis of data from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. “This is now the fastest-spinning asteroid that we know of, larger than 500 meters,” University of Washington astronomer Sarah Greenstreet said today at the American Astronomical Society’s winter meeting in Phoenix.

Greenstreet, who serves as an assistant astronomer at the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab and heads the Rubin Observatory’s working group for near-Earth objects and interstellar objects, is the lead author of a paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters that describes the discovery and its implications. It’s the first peer-reviewed paper based on data from Rubin’s LSST Camera in Chile.

2025 MN45 is one of more than 2,100 solar system objects that were detected during the observatory’s commissioning phase. Over time, the LSST Camera tracked variations in the light reflected by those objects. Greenstreet and her colleagues analyzed those variations to determine the size, distance, composition and rate of rotation for 76 asteroids, all but one of which are in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. (The other asteroid is a near-Earth object.)

The team found 16 “super-fast rotators” spinning at rates ranging between 13 minutes and 2.2 hours per revolution — plus three “ultra-fast rotators,” including 2025 MN45, that make a full revolution in less than five minutes.

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Year in Space: Get ready for magnificent moon missions

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

Lunar missions once felt like the domain of history books rather than current events, but an upcoming trip around the moon is poised to generate headlines at a level not seen since the Apollo era.

NASA’s Artemis 2 mission, which is due to launch four astronauts on a round-the-moon journey as a warmup for a future lunar landing, is shaping up as the spaceflight highlight of 2026. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who took the agency’s helm this month after a tumultuous year, says it’s the top item on his must-see list.

“What’s not to be excited about?” he said last week on CNBC. “We’re sending American astronauts around the moon. It’s the first time we’ve done that in a half-century. … We’re weeks away, potentially a month or two away at most from sending American astronauts around the moon again.”

The Pacific Northwest plays a significant role in the back-to-moon campaign. For example, L3Harris Technologies’ team in Redmond, Wash., built thrusters for Artemis 2’s Orion crew vehicle. And Artemis 2 isn’t the only upcoming moon mission with Seattle-area connections: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture, headquartered in Kent, plans to send an uncrewed Blue Moon Mark 1 lander to the lunar surface in 2026 to help NASA get set for future moon trips.

“We are taking our first steps to help open up the lunar frontier for all of humanity,” Paul Brower, Blue Origin’s director of lunar operations, said in a recent LinkedIn post.

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United Launch Alliance’s former CEO joins Blue Origin

Image: Tory Bruno
United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno, shown here at the Space Symposium in 2016, is joining Blue Origin. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

Eleven years after United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno partnered with Blue Origin to create a new rocket engine, he’s joining Jeff Bezos’ space venture as the president of Blue Origin’s newly created National Security Group.

The move could signal a major shift in the commercial space race as Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin revs up its competition with SpaceX. Bezos welcomed Bruno to his company on social media, and Bruno told Bezos that “we are going to do important work together.”

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman added his congratulations via the X social-media platform.

In its Dec. 26 announcement of the change, Blue Origin said Bruno would report to CEO Dave Limp. “We share a deep belief in supporting our nation with the best technology we can build,” Limp said in a post on X. “Tory brings unmatched experience, and I’m confident he’ll accelerate our ability to deliver on that mission.”

Bruno, 64, led ULA for 11 years following a 30-year career at Lockheed Martin. Not long after taking the reins at ULA in 2014, Bruno sat beside Bezos to announce a close collaboration on the development of Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine, which is used on ULA’s Vulcan rocket as well as Blue Origin’s orbital-class New Glenn rocket.

Since then, SpaceX has displaced United Launch Alliance as America’s dominant launch company. In 2014, ULA executed 14 launches while SpaceX executed six. So far this year, SpaceX has registered 165 launches, while ULA has registered six.

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Starcloud plans its next power moves for AI in space

Starcloud's founders in white suits: Philip Johnston, Ezra Feilden and Adi Oltean
Starcloud's founders — Philip Johnston, Ezra Feilden and Adi Oltean — wear protective gear in a clean room. (Starcloud Photo)

After taking one small but historic step for space-based AI, a Seattle-area startup called Starcloud is gearing up for a giant leap into what could be a multibillion-dollar business.

The business model doesn’t require Starcloud to manage how the data for artificial intelligence applications is processed. Instead, Starcloud provides a data-center “box” — a solar-powered satellite equipped with the hardware for cooling and communication — while its partners provide and operate the data processing chips inside the box.

Starcloud CEO Philip Johnston said his company has already worked out a contract along those lines with Denver-based Crusoe Cloud, a strategic partner.

“In the long term, you can think of this more like an energy provider,” he told GeekWire. “We tell Crusoe, ‘We have this box that has power, cooling and connectivity, and you can do whatever you want with that. You can put whatever chip architecture you want in there, and anything else.’ That means we don’t have to pay for the chips. And by far the most expensive part of all this, by the way, is the chips. Much more expensive than the satellite.”

If the arrangement works out the way Johnston envisions, providing utilities in space could be lucrative. He laid out an ambitious roadmap: “The contract is 10 gigawatts of power from 2032 for five years, at 3 cents per kilowatt-hour. That comes to $13.1 billion worth of energy.”

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