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Zeno wins $7.5M contract for underwater nuclear power

Illustration: Radioisotope power system on seafloor
An artist’s conception shows Zeno’s radioisotope power system on the seafloor. (Zeno Power Illustration)

Zeno Power says it’s been awarded a $7.5 million contract from the Department of Defense to build and demonstrate a radioisotope power system that can provide distributed power on the seabed.

The program, funded through the Pentagon’s Operational Energy Innovation Office and the Office of Naval Research, calls for the demonstration to take place by 2025.

Zeno maintains offices in Seattle as well as Washington, D.C., and one of its partners in the program is Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture, which is headquartered in Kent, Wash.

The objective of the program — known as Distributed Energy Provided Throughout the Seas, or DEPTHS — is to develop decentralized nodes for energy generation and distribution on the seabed. Such a system could open the way for long-endurance seafloor sensor systems and charging stations for autonomous undersea vehicles.

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Augmented-reality training system aces flight test

Augmented-reality view of virtual fighter jet
A computer-generated image of a fighter jet shows up on augmented-reality glasses. (Boeing Photo)

Boeing and an augmented-reality company called Red 6 have successfully flown and tested a virtual display system in a TA-4J Skyhawk tactical aircraft, in preparation for putting the system on a T-7 advanced training jet.

The system lets pilots see and interact with virtual aircraft, targets and threats on the ground and in the air, while also experiencing the stresses that come with physically flying their airplane. The idea is to provide pilots with a realistic training environment while minimizing the risks of getting hurt.

“Boeing is the first company to team with Red 6 on this type of advanced training technology,” Donn Yates, executive director of Boeing Air Force Fighters and Trainers Business Development, said today in a news release. “The successful series of ground tests and four flight sorties illustrate our collaborative ability to rapidly integrate, deliver and test new technology with the potential to change fighter pilot training for an entire generation.”

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New Frontier bridges past and future of hypersonic flight

David Gregory and Bill Bruner at New Frontier Aerospace HQ
New Frontier Aerospace’s chief operating officer, David Gregory (at left), lays his hand on the company’s Mjölnir rocket engine while CEO Bill Bruner holds a 3D-printed model of the company’s hypersonic rocket ship. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

TUKWILA, Wash. — Thirty years after the first flight of a pioneering reusable rocket ship known as the Delta Clipper Experimental, or DC-X, a commercial venture is aiming to bring its legacy to life in the Seattle area. Even its name — New Frontier Aerospace — is a callback to the earlier days of America’s space effort, going back to John F. Kennedy references to outer space as part of his “New Frontier.”

“We’re sort of like the grandson of DC-X,” New Frontier’s co-founder and CEO, Bill “Burners” Bruner, said at the startup’s headquarters in Tukwila.

But he doesn’t see New Frontier as a space launch venture in the strictest sense of the word. “We’re not doing the squat, or cylindrical or conical shapes that we were talking about in those days,” he told me. “We’re proposing to combine the hypersonic research of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, and some of those geometries, with reusable rockets to attack the trillion-dollar air transportation market instead of the $11 billion space launch market.”

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Universe Today

Pentagon’s new UFO website is still a work in progress

Bright circle in blue sky from 2021 UAP video
An anomalous object shows up on video captured by a Navy fighter jet in 2021. (Credit: AARO / DoD)

The Pentagon has opened up a new portal on the internet for professionals to submit reports about UFOs — now officially known as unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs — and for the rest of us to find out about the reports that have been released.

AARO.mil, the website for the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, is still a work in progress. For example, a promised online form for contacting the AARO is labeled as “Coming Soon.” But the version unveiled today offers eight videos showing UAPs, plus archives for congressional reports and briefings, press releases and links to other resources.

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Stratolaunch hits milestone in its hypersonic quest

Stratolaunch's Roc airplane releases TA-0 test vehicle in mid-flight
Stratolaunch releases the TA-0 separation test vehicle from its Roc airplane. (Stratolaunch Photo / Ethan Wagner)

California-based Stratolaunch, the venture created by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, released a separation test vehicle for the first time this weekend during an experimental flight of the world’s largest airplane.

The event marked a significant milestone in Stratolaunch’s quest to create an air-launch system for rocket-powered hypersonic vehicles.

The May 13 outing was the 11th flight test for Stratolaunch’s flying launch pad — a twin-fuselage, six-engine airplane with a record-setting 385-foot wingspan. The plane is nicknamed Roc in honor of a giant bird in Middle East mythology.

Roc carried the Talon-A separation test vehicle, known as TA-0, during three previous test flights. But this was the first time TA-0 was released from Roc’s center-wing pylon to fly free. The release took place during a four-hour, eight-minute flight that involved operations in Vandenberg Space Force Base’s Western Range, off California’s central coast.

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Microsoft Azure Space turns a chatbot into a satbot

Satellite antenna
The Pentagon envisions linking multiple ground communication systems with diverse satellite networks. (Photo via Defense Innovation Unit)

Can a chatbot help Pentagon planners find the satellite data they need to understand what’s happening in a global hotspot? Microsoft Azure Space recently showed the U.S. military how an application beefed up with AI could do just that.

The daylong demonstration, which was conducted for the Defense Innovation Unit’s Hybrid Space Architecture program last month, is among several space-related developments that Microsoft and its partners showcased today in advance of next week’s Space Symposium in Colorado.

Other developments include a collaboration with Ball Aerospace and Loft Federal on an experimental satellite program for the Defense Department’s Space Development Agency; a new frontier for Microsoft Azure’s partnership with Viasat; and a milestone for the Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center.

“Azure Space has been committed to enabling people to achieve more, both on and off the planet,” Stephen Kitay, senior director of Microsoft Azure Space, told me. “And this commitment encompasses not only commercial [applications], but also empowers government missions as well. Digital transformation within the government is the key to unlocking the full potential of what’s possible in space, and Microsoft is providing these technologies and solutions to government agencies alongside our partners to make this transformation possible.”

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How power plays could open new frontiers in space

Illustration: Spacecraft with nuclear thermal propulsion system
An artist’s conception shows a nuclear thermal propulsion system at work in orbit (USNC-Tech Illustration)

As more and more hardware goes into Earth orbit, and eventually to the moon and Mars, where will the power to run all those machines come from?

That’s one of the questions under consideration at a State of the Space Industrial Base workshop that’s being conducted this week at Seattle’s Museum of Flight.

The workshop, hosted by Space Northwest, is bringing together government, academic and commercial leaders to assess the state of advanced power and propulsion for space missions, as well as the outlook for a Department of Defense initiative known as Hybrid Space Architecture.

Input from the workshop will be combined with insights gained at two other workshops in Florida and New Mexico to help the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit produce its annual report about the space industry’s potential contributions to sustaining America’s leadership on the final frontier.

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Universe Today

UFO update says Pentagon’s case count is rising rapidly

Gimbal video of anomalous aerial encounter
Cockpit video records an anomalous aerial encounter that occurred off the Florida coast in 2015. (U.S. Navy Photo)

A new report to Congress says the Pentagon’s task force on UFOs — now known as unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs — has processed more reports in the past couple of years than it did in the previous 17 years. But that doesn’t mean we’re in the midst an alien invasion.

The unclassified report was issued this week by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, in collaboration with the Department of Defense’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO. The office was created by congressional mandate, and this week’s report serves as an update to a preliminary assessment of the Pentagon’s UAP reports issued in 2021.

That assessment said there were 144 reports relating to aerial anomalies sighted by military service members between 2004 and 2021. “There have been 247 new reports and another 119 that were either since discovered or reported after the preliminary assessment’s time period,” the newly released report says. That brings the total to 510 UAP reports as of last Aug. 30.

The authors of the report say the increase in the reporting rate “is partially due to a better understanding of the possible threats that UAP may represent, either as safety of flight hazards or as potential adversary collection platforms, and partially due to reduced stigma surrounding UAP reporting.”

Either way, U.S. intelligence and military officials say they see that as a good thing. “This increased reporting allows more opportunities to apply rigorous analysis and resolve events,” the report says.

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Defense Innovation Unit explores Northwest tech frontier

DIU's Mike Madsen in Seattle
Mike Madsen, the Defense Innovation Unit’s acting director, talks at a Seattle workshop. (NSIN via Twitter)

If space is the next frontier for national security, then the Pacific Northwest may well be the new frontier for that next frontier.

That’s the word from Steve “Bucky” Butow, an Air Force brigadier general who is now director of the space portfolio at the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit.

“I really think that the best news story out of the Pacific Northwest is just how impactful this region is in the new space economy,” Butow told me. “It’s not widely recognized, but I think that’s going to be changing here in the near future.”

Butow and his teammates at the DIU got an on-the-ground look at Seattle’s tech frontier this week during a series of meetings and site visits in the region. Among the tour’s highlights were meetings with executives at Amazon and Microsoft (which just won contracts to help build the Pentagon’s Hybrid Space Architecture), a roadshow workshop with entrepreneurs and venture capital investors, and a stopover at SpaceX’s satellite facility in Redmond, Wash.

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Microsoft and Lockheed Martin team up on defense tech

Visualization of global connectivity for defense assets
Future military communications may rely on secure cloud computing services. (Lockheed Martin Illustration)

Lockheed Martin and Microsoft say they’re deepening their strategic relationship to help power the next generation of computing and communications technology for the Department of Defense.

Cloud-based services play a key role in that relationship. Under the terms of an agreement announced this week, Lockheed Martin will become the first non-governmental entity to operate independently inside the Microsoft Azure Government Secret cloud.

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