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Sunlight-powered propulsion system passes a big test

Thruster glows as it undergoes testing in vacuum chamber
Portal’s heat exchanger thruster, known as Flare, fires up during a test in a vacuum chamber. (Portal Space Systems Photo)

Bothell, Wash.-based Portal Space Systems says it has successfully tested its solar thermal propulsion system at operational temperatures inside a vacuum chamber, marking a first for the commercial space industry.

The test marks a key step in the development of Portal’s 3D-printed heat exchanger thruster, known as Flare. The thruster is part of a propulsion system that converts concentrated sunlight into heat. That heat would warm up an ammonia-based propellant to produce thrust and send Portal’s Supernova satellite platform where it needs to go.

Supernova is designed to maneuver payloads quickly between orbital locations — for example, to head off close encounters between a growing number of commercial satellites, or to respond to space-based threats from rivals such as China and Russia.

NASA and the U.S. Air Force have experimented with solar thermal propulsion since the 1960s, but Portal is the first commercial venture to capitalize on the concept. Solar thermal propulsion would make Supernova more maneuverable than traditional spacecraft — with the ability to change orbits within hours or days, rather than weeks or months.

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Blue Origin plans to expand suborbital space program

Blue Origin New Shepard lifts off
Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket ship lifts off for a suborbital mission in June. (Blue Origin Photo)

The executive in charge of Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital space program has laid out plans to scale up the operation for weekly launches — and says the company is looking into setting up a second launch site, perhaps outside the U.S.

Phil Joyce, Blue Origin’s senior vice president for New Shepard, discussed the road ahead over the weekend at the Global Spaceport Alliance’s International Spaceport Forum in Sydney, Australia. His remarks were reported by Aviation Week as well as SpaceNews.

Customer demand is a major factor behind the expansion plans. “The demand is really strong,” SpaceNews quoted Joyce as saying. “We’re continuing to see sales every week, every day.” Blue Origin’s backlog reportedly extends more than a year out.

To meet the demand, Jeff Bezos’ space venture plans to phase in three next-generation New Shepard rocket ships starting next year, Joyce said. Those vehicles would be powered by an upgraded version of Blue Origin’s hydrogen-fueled BE-3 engine.

The plan calls for retiring the two reusable rocket ships that are currently carrying crew by the end of 2027.

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Whistleblower report raises NASA safety concerns

NASA logo sign at headquarters building
NASA's "Worm" logo sign is unveiled at the space agency's headquarters in 2023. (NASA Photo / Joel Kowsky)

U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., today released a report that quotes NASA whistleblowers as saying they’ve “already seen safety impacts” affecting the space agency, due to budget cuts that are canceling out previously appropriated funding.

One whistleblower is quoted as voicing concern “that we’re going to see an astronaut death within a few years” because of the Trump administration’s “chainsaw approach.”

“Like other premier science agencies, NASA has thrived on consistent, bipartisan investments, which are essential to America’s economic prosperity and technological supremacy. But today, NASA faces an existential threat under the Trump administration,” the report says.

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How billionaires boost America in space race with China

Blended image of Elon Musk celebrating after launch of NASA astronauts, and Jeff Bezos celebrating after first crewed New Shepard launch
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have both celebrated space victories. (Left: GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota, 2020. Right: Blue Origin Photo, 2021)

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has only just begun to launch a heavy-lift rocket that was a decade in the making — its orbital-class New Glenn launch vehicle, which had its first flight in January. But it’s already planning something even bigger to rival Starship, the super-rocket built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Bezos simply isn’t ready to share those plans yet.

Actually, a super-heavy-lift rocket concept known as New Armstrong (named in honor of first moonwalker Neil Armstrong) has been talked about for almost as long as New Glenn (whose name pays tribute to John Glenn, the first American in orbit). Bezos mentioned the idea way back in 2016, but said at the time that it was “a story for the future.”

Details about New Armstrong are still a story for the future, according to an account in “Rocket Dreams,” a book about the billionaire space race written by Washington Post staff writer Christian Davenport.

“They’ve been very quiet about it,” Davenport says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. “I asked Jeff specifically about that at the New Glenn launch, and he didn’t want to talk about it.”

In the book, he quotes Bezos as saying only that “we are working on a vehicle that will come after New Glenn and lift more mass.”

New Armstrong is one of the few mysteries that Davenport wasn’t able to crack in his account of the space rivalry between Bezos and Musk. Davenport first addressed that rivalry seven years ago in a book titled “Space Barons,” but this updated saga is set in the context of an even bigger rivalry between America and China. Both nations are aiming to send astronauts to the moon by 2030, if not before.

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NASA hits new milestones with latest class of astronauts

Lineup of newly named NASA astronaut candidates
NASA’s Class of 2025 astronauts include Ben Bailey, Cameron Jones, Katherine Spies, Erin Overcash, Adam Fuhrmann, Lauren Edgar, Yuri Kubo and Imelda Muller (from left, top row), plus Anna Menon and Rebecca Lawler nestling in the A’s of the NASA logo. (NASA Photo)

NASA has named the next 10 members of its astronaut corps, and one of those 10 is a geologist with plenty of space research experience who hails from the Pacific Northwest.

Lauren Edgar — who regards Sammamish, Wash., as her hometown — is part of the first class of astronaut candidates in which the women outnumber the men. It’s also the first class to include someone who has already gone into orbit on a commercial spacecraft, and who set a spaceflight record to boot.

NASA’s Class of 2025 was introduced today at a ceremony conducted at Johnson Space Center in Houston, with members of Congress and other VIPs in attendance.

Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy noted that more than 8,000 people applied for this year’s spots. “We picked the best and the brightest, the most skilled, the best-looking, the best personalities to take these 10 spots,” he said. “One of these 10 could actually be one of the first Americans to put their boots on the Mars surface, which is very, very cool.”

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Blue Origin will work on getting VIPER rover to the moon

Illustration: VIPER rover and Blue Moon lander on the moon
An artist’s conception shows NASA’s VIPER rover and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon MK1 lander on the lunar surface. (Blue Origin Illustration)

NASA has selected Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture to help it resurrect a mission to send a robotic prospector to the moon’s south polar region.

Blue Origin will be tasked with drawing up a plan to deliver the VIPER rover to the moon in late 2027, using its uncrewed Blue Moon MK1 cargo lander. This would be Blue Origin’s second lunar lander. The first lander is due for launch as early as this year, with the objective of delivering NASA’s SCALPSS camera system and a retroreflective array to the lunar surface.

The newly announced task order, known as CS-7, was awarded through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program and has a total potential value of $190 million.

“NASA is leading the world in exploring more of the moon than ever before, and this delivery is just one of many ways we’re leveraging U.S. industry to support a long-term American presence on the lunar surface,” acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said today in a news release.

VIPER is designed to explore permanently shadowed regions near the moon’s south pole for signs of volatile materials, including water ice. Such ice could be extracted to produce drinkable water and breathable oxygen as well as hydrogen for rocket fuel. VIPER is an acronym that stands for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover.

Duffy said the VIPER mission will “help inform future landing sites for our astronauts and better understand the moon’s environment – important insights for sustaining humans over longer missions, as America leads our future in space.”

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Hubble Network raises $70M for Bluetooth satellites

Illustration: Hubble Network satellite in Earth orbit
An artist’s conception shows one of Hubble Network’s satellites in orbit. (Hubble Network Illustration)

Seattle-based Hubble Network says it has raised $70 million in additional investment to accelerate the growth of its satellite-powered Bluetooth network.

“Our vision has always been to connect billions of devices seamlessly and cost-effectively, without requiring hardware or infrastructure,” Alex Haro, the company’s co-founder and CEO, said today in a news release. “This round confirms the strong demand for scalable, low-power, global IoT connectivity.”

The Series B funding round builds on $30 million in previously announced investments. This round was led by Ryan Swagar, co-founder of Swagar Capital. Other investors include Tom Gonser, co-founder of DocuSign; Mike Farley, co-founder of Tile; Marc Weiser, managing director and founder of RPM Ventures; Tuff Yen, founder and managing partner of Seraph Group; and Y Combinator.

“Hubble is doing what many thought was impossible, making space accessible for everyday devices,” Swagar said. “Their unique architecture, strong technical execution and proven customer demand position them to define the future of global connectivity.”

In July, Hubble Network unveiled a system that uses satellites and low-power Bluetooth signals to monitor devices and sensors around the globe. The network relies on a technology called Bluetooth Low Energy, also known as BLE, plus proprietary enhancements that make it possible for Bluetooth signals to be picked up by phased-array antennas on Hubble Network’s satellites.

The company has no connection to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Instead, Hubble Network’s name plays off the idea that its network can serve as a hub for BLE transmissions. It currently operates seven satellites but plans to grow that constellation to 60 satellites by 2028.

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Scientists study the brain cells that show us illusions

Jerome Lecoq points to diagram on computer screen
Neuroscientist Jerome Lecoq points to a diagram that was used to study how the brain interprets illusions. (Allen Institute Photo / Erik Dinnel)

Our brains are wired to fill in perceptual gaps in what we see, whether it’s a lion hiding in the trees or the shapes hidden in an optical illusion — but how does that wiring work? Neuroscientists are zeroing in on how special kinds of brain cells help us see things that aren’t actually there.

Researchers from Seattle’s Allen Institute for Brain Science and the University of California at Berkeley traced the role played by the cells, known as IC-encoder neurons, in a study published today by the journal Nature Neuroscience.

“The goal of this project was to understand the neural basis of pattern completion, or filling in when you are dealt ambiguous or missing data in your vision,” said senior study author Hillel Adesnik, a neuroscientist at Berkeley.

Such research could help scientists understand how our brains create a complete picture of the world around us from the data that our senses provide. It could also eventually reveal how hallucinations arise, or point the way to better computer vision systems.

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How AI and other tech trends are boosting space ventures

Illustration: Blue Origin's Blue Ring transfer vehicle in orbit
The first mission for Blue Origin’s Blue Ring orbital vehicle, set for next year, reflects multiple trends in the space industry. (Blue Origin Illustration)

Artificial intelligence and other technological trends are smoothing the way for commercial space ventures ranging from multibillion-dollar companies to a new wave of startups.

It probably comes as no surprise that Blue Origin, the space company created by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is taking advantage of AI. “You can imagine this is a favorite area of our founder,” said Ariane Cornell, Blue Origin’s vice president of New Glenn strategy and business operations. “So, just generally, we are using it across the board.”

But other AI-fueled applications might raise an eyebrow. For example, Rebel Space is helping satellite companies generate synthetic data that could point to a potential valve failure long before the spacecraft is launched. “The AI you trained would see it, and you would prevent a massive mission failure in the future,” said Carrie Marshall, the startup’s co-founder and CEO.

Cornell, Marshall and other executives reflected on the trends accelerating the space industry this week during the Seattle Space Superiority Summit, presented on Sept. 11 by FUSE VC at the Museum of Flight.

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Xplore captures a satellite snapshot of North Korea

Hyperspectral image of North Korean coastline
Xplore’s satellite captured this color-coded image in visible and near-infrared wavelengths over North Korea. ©2025 Xplore Inc.

Nine months after the launch of its first satellite, Bellevue, Wash.-based Xplore is sharing a hyperspectral view of North Korean territory as seen from orbit.

The image, captured in visible and near-infrared wavelengths by Xplore’s XCUBE-1 satellite, was unveiled today at the Seattle Space Superiority Summit at the Museum of Flight.

Xplore’s co-founder and chief operating officer, Lisa Rich, said the picture shows “semi-submerged farms that are likely rice paddies,” plus fish farms and salt flats. “This is a big reveal for us today,” Rich said.

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