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.
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.
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.
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?’ ”
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.
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.
The Federal Aviation Administration has issued draft regulations that would smooth the way for drones to fly at night and over groups of innocent bystanders.
Such operations are already technically allowed, but only with a waiver or an exemption. If the proposed regulations go into effect, drone flights at night and over people could become more routine.
Looser limits could also bring America closer to the day when companies such as Amazon and Walmart routinely deliver shipments via drone.
Chao said the easing of limits on drone flights “will help communities reap the considerable economic benefits of this growing industry and help our country remain a global technology leader.”
Video captured by China’s Chang’e-4 lander shows the Yutu 2 rover roaming the surface of the moon’s far side. (CNSA via Weibo)
Flush from the success of the world’s first rover mission to the moon’s far side, Chinese space officials said today that they’re planning robotic trips to the lunar south pole to prepare the way for a crewed moon base.
Chang’e-4 and its solar-powered Yutu 2 rover are hibernating during the 2-week-long lunar night, but their handlers are already thinking about sending probes to places where the sun almost always shines.
SpaceX’s uncrewed Dragon cargo ship is released by the International Space Station’s robotic arm. (NASA Photo)
SpaceX’s robotic Dragon cargo ship splashed down in the Pacific Ocean tonight, bringing science experiments and used hardware from the International Space Station back to Earth after dark.
The Dragon delivered nearly 3 tons of food, supplies and experiments to the stationon Dec. 8, and it took more than four weeks to unload the cargo and reload the Dragon with payloads for the return trip. NASA delayed the Dragon’s descent by several days due to concerns about weather in the recovery area.
The station’s robotic arm released the Dragon at 3:33 p.m. PT, and the craft parachuted to its splashdown just before 9:15 p.m. SpaceX’s recovery ship headed to the scene to pull the Dragon out of the sea and bring it back to port in California.
Robert Hoyt is the co-founder and CEO of Tethers Unlimited Inc. (TUI via YouTube)
Bothell, Wash.-based Tethers Unlimited Inc. has laid off about 20 percent of its workforce due to a cash crunch brought on by the partial government shutdown, the company’s CEO says.
Tethers Unlimited snared an impressive lineup of contracts from NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, for work on innovative spacecraft thruster systems and space-based fabrication systems. But it can’t get paid for the work it’s done over the past three months, CEO Rob Hoyt told GeekWire today in an email.
Hoyt expects commercial contracts to keep the company afloat during the shutdown, which has now gone into its fourth week. But he said the decision to cut back on staff was “really painful and disheartening.” In his email, he decried what he called a game of “Russian roulette with the American economy.”
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Susan Gaither tickle a robotic hand at Nvidia’s robotics research lab in Seattle. (Nvidia Photo)
When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang interacted with a sensitive robotic hand at today’s open house for his company’s robotics research lab in Seattle, it was love at first touch.
“It almost feels like a pet!” Huang said as he tickled the hand’s fingers, causing them to retreat gently.
“It’s surprisingly therapeutic,” he told the crowd around him. “Can I have one?”
The robotic hand, which is programmed to avoid poking humans when they come too close, was just one of the machines on display at the 13,000-square-foot lab in Seattle’s University District.
Nvidia is based in California’s Silicon Valley and has nearly 200 employees working at an engineering center in Redmond, Wash.
But when the chipmaker laid plans to open a lab focusing on research in robotics and artificial intelligence, it set up shop in the same building that houses the University of Washington’s CoMotion Lab. It also put Dieter Fox, a longtime computer science professor at UW, in charge of the operation as senior director of robotics research.
