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Stratolaunch space venture scales back sharply

Stratolaunch plane
A photo taken during a high-speed taxi test shows the nose gear on Stratolaunch’s twin-fuselage airplane rising from the runway at California’s Mojave Air and Space Port. (Stratolaunch Photo)

Stratolaunch, the Seattle-based space venture created by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen seven years ago, says it’s discontinuing its programs to develop a new type of rocket engine and a new line of rockets.

The company said it would continue work on the world’s largest airplane, which is designed to serve as a flying launch pad for rockets. Last week, Stratolaunch put its 385-foot-wide, twin-fuselage plane through a high-speed taxi test that many saw as a precursor for its first test flight at Mojave Air and Space Port.

“Stratolaunch is ending the development of their family of launch vehicles and rocket engine. We are streamlining operations, focusing on the aircraft and our ability to support a demonstration launch of the Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL air-launch vehicle,” the company said in an emailed statement. “We are immensely proud of what we have accomplished and look forward to first flight in 2019.”

The dramatic turn of events comes three months after Allen’s death.

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It’s prime time for ‘Super Blood Wolf Moon’ eclipse

Lunar eclipse
A ruddy lunar eclipse hangs over Mount Rainier in 2015. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)

Are you ready for Jan. 20’s “Super Blood Wolf Moon”? The good news is that North America is well-positioned to see a total lunar eclipse for the first time in nearly a year.

The bad news? If the skies are clouded over, it doesn’t matter.

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Hubble team hits ‘reset’ to fix balky camera

Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope gets its last close-up after a 2009 shuttle servicing mission. (NASA Photo)

NASA says the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 is back to doing science observations, a week after it went dark due to a telemetry glitch.

Basically, engineers hit the reset button to clear up the telemetry problem. After going through tests and calibration, the camera completed its first science observations just after noon ET (9 a.m. PT) today, NASA said in a status update.

Hubble’s three other main instruments — the Advanced Camera for Surveys, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph — were unaffected by WFC3’s glitch.

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Relativity will use historic launch pad at the Cape

Relativity space launch
An artist’s conception shows Relativity Space’s Terran 1 rocket taking off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Launch Complex 16. (Relativity Space Illustration)

Relativity Space, the California-based rocket startup that got its start in Seattle, has won Air Force clearance to build its Florida launch facility on a site that saw service during NASA’s Apollo and Gemini programs in the 1960s.

The agreement gives Relativity Space exclusive use of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Launch Complex 16 — which was first used for Titan missile launches, and then for Gemini crew processing and static firing tests of the Apollo service module’s propulsion engine under NASA’s supervision.

After Apollo, the site was returned to the Air Force and used for test-firing Pershing ballistic missiles. Launch Complex 16 has been largely dormant since the Pershing program was deactivated in 1988 to comply with the U.S.-Soviet Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

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Amazon launches AI event called re:MARS

Jeff Bezos and robot dog
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos takes a stroll with a SpotMini robot dog. (Jeff Bezos via Twitter)

Amazon’s annual invitation-only event on machine learning, automation, robotics and space — known as Mars — has become a high-tech highlight for insiders, featuring billionaire founder and CEO Jeff Bezos riding a giant robot or walking a robot dog.

Now a wider circle of tech leaders can get in on a spin-off experience called re:MARS, which is due to make its debut June 4-7 at the Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.

The event will shine a spotlight on the leading lights and cutting-edge advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning, Amazon said today in a blog posting.

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SpaceX shifts Starship focus from L.A. to Texas

Starship Hopper under construction
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted this picture of a Starship prototype under construction in Texas in December. (Elon Musk via Twitter)

SpaceX says it’ll build and test the prototypes for its next-generation Starship space cruiser and Super Heavy booster in South Texas, despite a deal it struck to build a rocket factory at the Port of Los Angeles.

At least by some accounts, the turnabout is a setback to Los Angeles’ efforts to build a high-tech “Silicon Harbor” at the port, with SpaceX’s planned 18-acre site on Terminal Island as the centerpiece. The Los Angeles City Council approved a 20-year lease agreement with billionaire CEO Elon Musk’s company in May.

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Boeing backs Isotropic satellite connectivity venture

Isotropic terminal
A cutaway view shows Isotropic Systems’ integrated terminal for satellite communications. (Isotropic Systems)

London-based Isotropic Systems, a startup that is developing flat-panel antennas and high-throughput terminals for satellite communications, says it has raised $14 million in a Series A financing round led by Boeing HorizonX Ventures.

Isotropic’s user terminals take advantage of optical beam steering, which lets its terminals connect with several different satellites without increasing cost or complexity. The company says its technology will help clear a path for low-cost, mass-market broadband connectivity via satellites.

“Boeing’s investment provides our team access to Boeing experts, testing labs and other valuable resources to fast-track the deployment of our terminal solutions and to leverage our intellectual property across other space-based and wireless connectivity applications,” Isotropic founder and CEO John Finney said in a news release.

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Astranis to provide satellite internet for Alaska

Astranis satellite
An artist’s conception shows an Astranis satellite in geostationary orbit. (Astranis Illustration)

Astranis Space Technologies says it has struck a deal with Alaska’s Pacific Dataport Inc. to provide America’s northernmost state with three times as much satellite data bandwidth as it has today, via its first satellite in geostationary orbit.

“It is a firm contract in the many tens of millions of dollars,” Astranis co-founder and CEO John Gedmark told GeekWire in advance of today’s announcement. It also arguably ranks as the biggest deal of its type for a satellite company as young as Astranis, which emerged from stealth mode less than a year ago.

Astranis put a small-scale test satellite into low Earth orbit last year, and plans to follow up with the launch of a 660-pound (300-kilogram), 3-foot-wide telecommunications satellite in the second half of next year. Gedmark said the satellite would be sent up as a secondary payload by a major launch provider, but declined to say which one.

“This is going to happen fast,” he said.

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GM Cruise works to get Seattle operation in gear

GM Cruise Bolt
Cruise Automation’s self-driving Chevy Bolt took a scenic tour of Seattle, including the Pike Place Market, over the weekend. (Cruise Automation Photo / Stephen Brashear)

The Seattle “tech talk” sponsored this week by GM’s autonomous-vehicle subsidiary, Cruise Automation, had all the hallmarks of a recruiting event for software engineers, plus an extra twist: the self-driving Chevy Bolt that was parked outside the Flatstick Pub in Pioneer Square.

Sure, there was free beer, free food and free mini-golf — but the Bolt drew a crowd as well. And that level of interest tickled Dan Kan, the former Seattleite who went on to become Cruise’s co-founder and chief operating officer.

“Being able to start to see it coming to your city is pretty exciting,” Kan told GeekWire before Jan. 15’s tech talk and party. “We were just out yesterday, taking some photos, and people wanted to talk to us about it. They wanted to come up and say, ‘Hey, how’s this going to work?’ ”

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Satellogic strikes China launch deal for 90 satellites

Long March 6 launch
China’s Long March 6 rocket lifts off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in 2017. (CCTV via YouTube)

An international space venture called Satellogic says it will have 90 satellites launched by a Chinese company to create an Earth-observing constellation.

The first launch by the China Great Wall Industry Corp. under the newly announced deal, scheduled for later this year, will deliver 13 satellites to low Earth orbit on China’s Long March 6 rocket, Satellogic said today in a news release.

Satellogic’s constellation seems likely to compete with the remote-imaging satellite constellations operated by San Francisco-based Planet and Seattle-based BlackSky. The company promises to remap Earth at 1-meter pixel resolution every week and dramatically reduce the cost of high-frequency geospatial analytics.

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