Categories
GeekWire

Analyst sees Jeff Bezos as ’emerging force’ in space

Amazon's Jeff Bezos
Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos takes questions in front of Blue Origin’s mock-up for the New Shepard spaceship’s crew capsule. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)

The news of the day is all about Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ philanthropic efforts, but on the business side of things, an influential financial analyst argues that the world’s richest man is an “emerging force” with the financial muscle to advance the global space industry — and Amazon as well.

In a note to investors, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas and his colleagues say Bezos’ Blue Origin venture, as well as Amazon, should be included along with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and more than 100 other firms as key participants in a commercial space race.

Jonas writes that investors may want to pay far more attention to Bezos’ space efforts, which the billionaire has said is the “most important work that I’m doing.”

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

NASA and Russia knock down conspiracy theory

Fixing space station leak
Space station crew members work to patch up a small hole in the inner hull of a Soyuz spacecraft on Aug. 30. (NASA / Roscosmos via @NASASpaceflight / Twitter)

NASA and Russia’s space agency issued a joint statement today aimed at quashing viral claims that someone on the International Space Station’s crew sabotaged a Soyuz capsule by drilling a hole in orbit and creating an air leak.

The statement came two weeks after the crew discovered and patched the hole — and 10 days after Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said he wouldn’t rule out the possibility of in-space sabotage.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Amazon’s perfect patent: A data-server drone

Drone visualization
This computer visualization shows the airflow for NASA’s modified design of a complete DJI Phantom 3 quadcopter configuration in hover mode. (NASA Ames Graphic / Patricia Ventura Diaz)

Amazon is well-known for developing delivery drones, and for delivering data through Amazon Web Services — so it had to be only a matter of time before someone at Amazon came up with the idea of delivering data via drones.

Actually, Abdul Sathar Sait came up with the idea back in 2014, when he was a principal product manager at AWS. And although he has since moved on to Oracle Cloud, Amazon officially has the patent as of today.

The patent application for “Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Data Services” describes a system by which network users can put in an order for enhanced data services, and have a drone flown out to the user’s location to provide those services.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Blue Origin’s timeline for flying people slips

Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith today signaled that the Kent, Wash.-based space company founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos is aiming to start flying people on suborbital space trips “early next year,” rather than later this year as previously envisioned.

Get the news brief on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Spaceflight gets Israeli moon lander set for launch

SpaceIL lander
SpaceIL’s lander is on display in a clean room. (SpaceIL Photo / Eliran Avital)

SpaceIL’s lunar lander is go for launch as a secondary payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that’s due to send a telecommunications satellite into geosynchronous orbit, Seattle-based Spaceflight announced today.

The launch, expected early next year, would represent the first Spaceflight rideshare mission to go beyond low Earth orbit. And Israel-based SpaceIL’s mission would represent the first non-governmental landing on the moon.

Spaceflight timed its announcement to coincide with Euroconsult’s World Satellite Business Week conference in Paris. It said rideshare opportunities to geosynchronous transfer orbit, or GTO, would be made available every 12 to 18 months, or as customer demand requires.

Although Spaceflight didn’t identify the primary payload for Spaceflight’s first GTO mission, it’s thought to be the PSN-6 telecommunications satellite, which was built for Indonesia’s PT Pasifik Satelit Nusantara by SSL, a Maxar Technologies subsidiary. This would be the first combined launch for Spaceflight and SSL.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

AI helps SETI sleuths find more radio bursts

AI seeking ET
Researchers used artificial intelligence to search through data from a radio source, capturing many more fast radio bursts than humans could. (Breakthrough Listen Illustration / Danielle Futselaar)

Researchers at Breakthrough Listen, a multimillion-dollar campaign to seek out signals from alien civilizations, still don’t know exactly what’s causing repeated bursts of radio waves from an distant galaxy — but thanks to artificial intelligence, they’re keeping closer tabs on the source, whatever it turns out to be.

A team led by Gerry Zhang, a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, developed a new type of machine-learning algorithm to comb through data collected a year ago during an observing campaign that used the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.

The campaign focused on a radio source known as FRB 121102, located in a dwarf galaxy sitting 3 billion light-years away in the constellation Auriga. Astronomers have observed plenty of fast radio bursts over the past decade, each lasting only a few milliseconds. Only FRB 121102 has been found to send out repeated bursts, however.

A number of theories have been proposed to explain the bursts, ranging from interactions involving magnetized neutron stars and black holes to deliberate signaling by advanced civilizations.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Boeing gets $2.9B contract for more KC-46 tankers

KC-46 tanker
Boeing’s KC-46 tanker is built to refuel military airplanes in flight. (Boeing Photo)

The U.S. Air Force today awarded Boeing a $2.9 billion contract for 18 more KC-46A tanker aircraft and associated equipment, bringing the total number of tankers on contract to 52.  The report comes as Boeing is preparing to make its first deliveries of the 767-based aircraft, which are being built at the company’s plant in Everett, Wash.

Get the news brief on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Jupiter’s brown spot sparks potty humor

Jupiter cloud system
This cloud formation on Jupiter is called “Mr. Hankey.” (NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Kevin M. Gill)

Jupiter’s titanic storms have spawned their share of memorable cloud features, including the Great Red Spot, Oval BA (a.k.a. Red Jr.) and the now-defunct Baby Red Spot. Now there’s a new spot on the map, nicknamed “Mr. Hankey.”

Mr. Hankey? The jolly cartoon poo made famous in a “South Park” Christmas episode?

Believe it: The longish, brownish storm system was the star of the show during last Thursday’s close encounter involving Jupiter and NASA’s Juno orbiter. In the days since the encounter, known as Perijove 15, the probe has been sending back Junocam’s imagery for processing by a legion of professional and amateur astronomers.

It was Kevin Gill, a software engineer and self-described data wrangler at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who gave the spot its “South Park” sobriquet in a tweet. But if you want to call the scene Jet N4, that’s OK, too.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

Boeing boosts laser communications venture

BridgeSat ground station
BridgeSat uses optical systems to send data to orbiting satellites. (BridgeSat / Boeing Illustration)

Boeing HorizonX Ventures is leading a $10 million investment round to boost BridgeSat, a Denver-based satellite communications company that aims to use laser technology for ground-to-space data connectivity.

Founded in 2015, BridgeSat is developing a network of optical ground stations and proprietary space terminals for use with satellites in low Earth orbit and geostationary orbit.  The technology enables secure, high-bandwidth data transmission between satellites, other spacecraft, drones and high-altitude aircraft.

In March, the company announced an agreement with NASA that could open the way for a commercial, laser-based communications system to be used on future space missions. The agreement calls for a ground station demonstration by the end of this year, with on-orbit testing to be completed by next May.

BridgeSat is also providing laser terminals and data services for ICEYE’s commercial satellite radar constellation.

In a news release issued today, Boeing and BridgeSat said the new round of investment will accelerate progress on the network of optical ground stations.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

Categories
GeekWire

SpaceX puts Telstar 18V satellite in orbit

SpaceX launch
The Telstar 18V satellite separates from the Falcon 9 second stage, as seen in a rocketcam view. (SpaceX via YouTube)

SpaceX launched its second heavyweight Telstar telecommunications satellite from Florida tonight, and brought the Falcon 9 rocket’s first-stage booster down for a landing on a drone ship hundreds of miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean.

The mission to put the 15,600-pound Telstar 18 Vantage satellite into geostationary transfer orbit for Canadian-based Telesat was nearly a carbon copy of SpaceX’s successful Telstar 19V launch in July, with a bit of added suspense due to the weather.

Concerns about thunderstorms and lightning near the launch site at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station delayed the launch for 77 minutes, but the Falcon 9 rose without a hitch at 12:45 a.m. ET Sept. 10 (9:45 p.m. PT Sept. 9).

Get the full story on GeekWire.