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Rubin Observatory team discovers 11,000 new asteroids

Visualization of asteroids discovered by Rubin Observatory in the inner solar system
A model of the inner solar system shows asteroids discovered by the Rubin Observatory in light teal. Previously known asteroids are dark blue. The model highlights almost 12,700 asteroids that the Rubin team has discovered over the course of a year and a half. (Photo: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory / NOIRLab / SLAC / AURA / R. Proctor. Star map: NASA / GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio. Gaia DR2: ESA / Gaia / DPAC. Image Processing: M. Zamani / NSF NOIRLab)

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s science team has discovered more than 11,000 new asteroids — a feat made possible by the Simonyi Survey Telescope’s advanced capabilities and data-crunching software developed at the University of Washington.

Rubin’s deluge of discoveries, based on a million early-stage observations that were collected over the course of a month and a half last summer, includes roughly 380 trans-Neptunian objects, or TNOs, and 33 previously unknown near-Earth objects. (Don’t panic: None of those near-Earth objects poses a threat to Earth.)

The data set also includes more than 80,000 previously known asteroids, some of which had been “lost” to science because of uncertainty about their orbits. The findings were confirmed by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center, the global clearinghouse for small solar system objects.

These aren’t the first finds for the $800 million observatory in Chile, which made its “First Look” debut last June. Astronomers previously reported finding more than 1,500 asteroids during earlier test rounds.

“This first large submission after Rubin First Look is just the tip of the iceberg and shows that the observatory is ready,” UW astronomer Mario Jurić, who heads Rubin’s solar system team, said in a news release. “What used to take years or decades to discover, Rubin will unearth in months. We are beginning to deliver on Rubin’s promise to fundamentally reshape our inventory of the solar system and open the door to discoveries we haven’t yet imagined.”

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GeekWire

Blue Origin jumps into the data center space race

Image: Satellite web
An artist’s conception shows a constellation of satellites in orbit. (Credit: OneWeb)

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is asking the Federal Communications Commission for authority to send up to 51,600 data center satellites into low Earth orbit, signaling its entry into an increasingly crowded space race.

The proposed constellation, dubbed Project Sunrise, would complement Blue Origin’s previously announced plans for a 5,408-satellite TeraWave constellation. TeraWave would provide ultra-high-speed connectivity for Project Sunrise’s satellites — and for terrestrial data centers, large-scale enterprises and government customers as well.

Once again, Bezos is competing with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which is seeking the FCC’s approval for a constellation of data centers that could amount to a million satellites. And SpaceX has already taken notice. So has Redmond, Wash.-based Starcloud, which is working on its own plans for a data center network that could call for tens of thousands of satellites.

Tech companies are becoming increasingly interested in fielding orbital data centers because such networks could bypass the power and cooling constraints facing Earth-based AI data centers. Last October, Bezos said at a tech conference in Italy that orbital data centers would be the “next step” in a transition from Earth-based to space-based industry. “We will be able to beat the cost of terrestrial data centers in space in the next couple of decades,” he said.

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Rubin Observatory revs up its astronomical alert system

Illustration: Data alerts on night sky with Rubin Observatory in the mountains below
Each night, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory issues thousands of alerts about changes in the night sky. (NOIRLab / NSF / DOE-SC Illustration)

An astronomical alert system developed at the University of Washington started off with a bang this week, sending out 800,000 notifications about moving asteroids, exploding stars and other celestial changes detected by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile.

That Feb. 24 surge was just the first wave. Eventually, the Alert Production Pipeline is expected to produce up to 7 million alerts per night. Astronomers will use the system to sift through the torrent of data, zeroing in on events ranging from newly detected asteroids to supernovas, variable stars and active galactic nuclei.

“Rubin’s alert system was designed to allow anyone to identify interesting astronomical events with enough notice to rapidly obtain time-critical follow-up observations,” Eric Bellm, a UW astronomer who leads the Alert Production Pipeline Group for the Rubin Observatory, said today in a news release. “Rubin will survey the sky at an unprecedented scale and allow us to find the most rare and unusual objects in the universe. We can’t wait to see the exciting science that comes from these data.”

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Sophia Space raises $10M for orbital computing systems

Illustration: Sophia Space data-processing satellite in orbit
An artist’s conception shows the Sophia 40 TILE satellite, with each tile powered by its own solar panel. (Sophia Space Illustration)

Sophia Space says it has closed a $10 million seed financing round to accelerate the development of orbital computing systems that could serve as the foundation for space-based data processing.

The startup’s tabletop-sized satellite modules, known as tiles, take advantage of a proprietary system that combines solar power generation and radiative cooling. Multiple tiles can be connected into racks to provide scalable computing power in low Earth orbit. The concept is called Thermal-Integrated LEO Edge, or TILE.

“With this seed round, we’re not just building compute modules,” Sophia Space CEO Rob DeMillo said today in a news release. “We’re building the infrastructure for the next era of space-based AI and data processing.”

The investment round was led by Alpha Funds, KDDI Green Partners Fund and Unlock Venture Partners — and builds upon $3.5 million in pre-seed investment. The newly raised cash will support the continued hiring of engineering talent, the further maturation of Sophia’s TILE platform and the formation of strategic partnerships in the orbital computing ecosystem.

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Cosmic Space

Elon Musk lays out a new vision as SpaceX acquires xAI

Illustration: Starship deploying satellite with Earth in background
An artist's conception shows a Starship upper stage deploying a satellite in orbit. (SpaceX Illustration)

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says he’s making space-based artificial intelligence the “immediate focus” of a newly expanded company that not only builds rockets and satellites, but also controls xAI’s generative-AI software and the X social-media platform.

That’s the upshot of today’s announcement that SpaceX has acquired xAI. The Information quoted unnamed sources as saying that xAI was valued at $250 billion, while SpaceX’s value was set at a trillion dollars. That would make SpaceX the most valuable private company in the world — but because Musk held a controlling interest in both companies, those valuations may be somewhat subjective.

Ross Gerber, an investment adviser who tracks Musk’s business dealings, quipped on X that the world’s richest person decided to go ahead with the acquisition after “a short negotiation with himself.”

Musk said the combination of SpaceX and xAI would facilitate the creation of a new constellation of orbital data centers. SpaceX is already seeking approval from the Federal Communications Commission to put up to a million satellites in low Earth orbit for such a constellation.

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SpaceX wants to launch a million data center satellites

Starlink streaks
This time-lapse image of Venus and the Pleiades shows the tracks of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites. (Torsten Hansen / IAU OAE / CC Attribution)

SpaceX founder Elon Musk wasn’t kidding about his plans to go big with orbital data centers: The company is asking the Federal Communications Commission to approve a plan to put up to a million satellites in orbit to process data for artificial intelligence applications.

“Launching a constellation of a million satellites that operate as orbital data centers is a first step towards becoming a Kardashev II-level civilization — one that can harness the sun’s full power — while supporting AI-driven applications for billions of people today and ensuring humanity’s multiplanetary future amongst the stars,” SpaceX said in an application filed with the FCC on Friday.

If realized, the plan could pose a challenge to AI titans including Microsoft, Amazon, Google and OpenAI — and to Seattle-area space companies such as Starcloud, Sophia Space and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture, all of which are aiming to serve the emerging market for AI data centers.

On the other hand, it could be a boon for SpaceX’s manufacturing facility in Redmond, Wash., which produces the satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink broadband constellation; and for Musk’s xAI company, which has been the focus of merger talks as SpaceX considers an initial public offering. The Wall Street Journal quoted unidentified sources as saying that Musk decided to take SpaceX public in part to raise more capital to build orbital data centers and to help xAI.

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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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OpenAI CEO considers exploring the space data frontier

Stoke Space hotfire test of booster engine
Stoke Space’s Zenith booster engine blazes during a hot-fire test in 2024. (Stoke Space Photo)

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is thinking about expanding into the final frontier for data centers, and his efforts to follow through on that thought reportedly turned into talks with Stoke Space, a rocket startup headquartered just south of Seattle.

Altman looked into putting together funding to invest in Stoke Space, with an eye toward either forging a partnership or ending up with a controlling stake in the company, according to an account published by The Wall Street Journal. The discussions reportedly began this summer and picked up in the fall, but are said to be no longer active.

Such a move would open up a new front in Altman’s competition with SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who has talked about scaling up Starlink V3 satellites to serve as data centers for AI applications. “SpaceX will be doing this,” Musk wrote in a post to his X social-media platform.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the Blue Origin space venture, has voiced a similar interest in orbital data centers — as has Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Google is partnering with Planet Labs on a space-based data processing effort known as Project Suncatcher.

The tech world’s appetite for data processing and storage is being driven by the rapidly growing resource requirements of artificial intelligence applications. Altman addressed the subject on Theo Von’s “This Past Weekend” podcast in July.

“I do guess that a lot of the world gets covered in data centers over time,” Altman said. “But I don’t know, because maybe we put them in space. Like, maybe we build a big Dyson sphere on the solar system and say, ‘Hey, it actually makes no sense to put these on Earth.’”

Citing unidentified sources, the Journal said Altman has been exploring the idea of investing in space ventures to follow through on that thought. Kent, Wash.-based Stoke Space, which is working on a fully reusable rocket called Nova, reportedly became a focus of his interest.

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Fiction Science Club

Dictators weaponize new technologies in fact and fiction

Illustration: Huge eye formed from ones and zeros
Surveillance tools and artificial intelligence are making life easier for Big Brother. (BigStock Illustration / Valery Brozhinsky)

When Ray Nayler began writing his science-fiction novel about a repressive regime powered by artificial intelligence, he didn’t expect the story to be as timely as it turned out to be. He really wishes it wasn’t.

“This is not a world that I think we should want to live in, and I would love it if it is a world that we completely avoid, and if the book seems in 10 to 20 years to be extraordinarily naive in its predictions,” Nayler says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast.

Nayler’s new novel, “Where the Axe Is Buried,” draws upon his experience working on international development in Russia and other former Soviet republics for the Peace Corps and the U.S. Foreign Service. “I added it up, and I’ve spent over a decade in authoritarian states,” he says. “And so I have, fortunately or unfortunately, a lot of experience with this problem.”

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Starcloud raises another $10M for data centers in space

Illustration: Starcloud data center being assembled in orbit
An artist’s conception shows data-center spacecraft being added to an orbital array. (Starcloud via YouTube)

Redmond, Wash.-based Starcloud got its start just last year under a different name — Lumen Orbit — but the newly renamed company is already filling out its seed funding round with $10 million in fresh investment for space-based data centers.

The new influx of capital comes after December’s announcement that the startup brought in $11 million from investors including NFX, Y Combinator (or YC, for short), FUSE, Soma Capital and scout funds from Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia. Starcloud graduated from Y Combinator’s summer cohort last year.

The additional funding comes from previous seed investors and several new venture capital firms in the form of a simplified agreement for future equity, or SAFE. If you add up the $11 million and the $10 million, “it can be thought of as a $21M seed, which is one of the highest-ever seed rounds for a company coming out of YC,” Philip Johnston, Starcloud’s CEO and one of its founders, told GeekWire in an email. Johnston said Starcloud doesn’t intend to identify the new investors until a Series A funding round takes place.

Starcloud’s big idea is to place a network of megawatt-scale computer servers in Earth orbit, powered by grids of solar panels that could stretch as much as 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) in width. Such space-based facilities would offer alternatives to terrestrial data centers that are taking up increasing amounts of territory, gobbling up increasing amounts of power, and stirring up increasing levels of controversy.

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