Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has been awarded $2.4 billion in the U.S. Space Force’s latest round of procurement for future national security launches.

“It’s an honor and huge responsibility to team with the U.S. government to launch our nation’s most important assets,” Jarrett Jones, Blue Origin’s senior vice president for New Glenn, said today in a news release. “Through this partnership, we’re looking forward to delivering on a number of critical national security priorities.” 

The newly announced round — which is known as National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 2 — also allotted $5.9 billion in contracts to SpaceX, and $5.4 billion to United Launch Alliance.

The launch contracts will cover about 54 missions, with contracts to be awarded between now and the end of fiscal year 2029. The launches themselves are expected to take place during a period running from fiscal year 2027 to 2032. SpaceX is expected to get 28 missions, ULA would get 19 missions, and Blue Origin would be awarded seven missions starting next year.

Blue Origin would use its New Glenn rocket, which had its first test launch in January and is due for its second launch by the middle of this year. For what it’s worth, New Glenn hasn’t yet been officially certified for national security launches, but the Space Force expects that to happen by next year. SpaceX would use its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, while ULA would use its Vulcan rocket.

The National Security Space Launch program is designed to widen the commercial options available to the Space Force for its missions.

“A robust and resilient space launch architecture is the foundation of both our economic prosperity and our national security,” Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Space Force’s chief of space operations, said in today’s news release. “National Security Space Launch isn’t just a program; it’s a strategic necessity that delivers the critical space capabilities our warfighters depend on to fight and win.”

Today’s announcement follows up on the Space Force’s Phase 3 Lane 1 procurement process, which is meant to apply to commercial-like space missions that can accept more risk. Last year, Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin joined SpaceX and ULA on the list for $5.6 billion in Lane 1 mission contracts — and last week, Kent-based Stoke Space and California-based Rocket Lab USA were added to that Lane 1 list.

Bothell, Wash.-based Portal Space Systems says it has raised $17.5 million in seed funding to accelerate the development of its Supernova space vehicle, which aims to harness the heat of the sun to power rapid-response maneuvers in orbit.

The oversubscribed investment round was led by AlleyCorp, with participation from Mach33, FUSE, First In, TFX, Offline Ventures, Atypical and other strategic investors. Portal said the funding will support the first full-scale demonstration of Supernova, with launch scheduled for mid-2026.

“Our vision is to provide next-gen spacecraft that today’s space operations demand and our nation deserves,” Portal CEO Jeff Thornburg said today in a news release. “This funding is a testament to the increasing recognition that maneuverability at will is the critical need in both defense and commercial space operations.”

Supernova will make use of a solar thermal propulsion system, with large, lightweight reflectors that focus the sun’s rays on a heat exchanger. When an ammonia-based propellant passes through the heat exchanger, it rapidly builds up pressure and produces thrust.

Thornburg said Supernova can “deliver the performance of nuclear thermal propulsion without the burden of launching a reactor.” The system is designed to push Supernova and its payloads from, say, low Earth orbit to a geostationary orbit in a matter of hours. In contrast, it might take a traditional space propulsion system weeks or months to execute a similar set of maneuvers, according to Portal.

Brannon Jones, a former SpaceX engineer who is now an investor at AlleyCorp, said Portal is “introducing a new paradigm of space operations.”

“We were particularly impressed by their Supernova spacecraft, which will improve maneuverability in space by over an order of magnitude, while also significantly extending operational lifespans by enabling a more sustained presence in space,” Jones said.

Mach33 is one of Portal’s early investors. “Jeff’s track record pioneering propulsion at SpaceX, Stratolaunch and [Amazon’s Project] Kuiper gave us early confidence in Portal,” said Aaron Burnett, Mach33 Financial Group’s CEO. “But the team’s rapid transformation of technical breakthroughs into staggering customer demand sealed our decision to double down this round.”

The funding round announced today adds to $2.6 million in pre-seed funding, plus $5.5 million in small-business research grants. Last summer, Portal won a commitment for $45 million in public-private support through SpaceWERX’s STRATFI program. Since then, Portal has opened an 8,000-square-foot headquarters and development lab in Bothell and is now looking at sites for a manufacturing facility.

The development plan for Supernova calls for a critical design review and testing of the system’s 3D-printed heat-exchanger thruster in the next few months. System integration would begin by the end of this year, leading up to next year’s launch on a rocket yet to be named.

Supernova is meant to address a need for rapid maneuverability in orbit as an increasing number of satellites complicate space traffic management — and as the U.S. military is becoming increasingly concerned about the potential for threatening orbital maneuvers orchestrated by China and Russia.

Update: United Launch Alliance postponed the April 9 launch of the first batch of full-scale satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper network due to unacceptable weather at the Florida launch site. We’ll update this story again when ULA determines the timing for the next launch opportunity.

Previously: Amazon and United Launch Alliance set April 9 as the initial date for the first launch of full-scale satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband internet network.

ULA said the two-hour window for the Atlas V rocket’s liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41 in Florida is scheduled to open at 7 p.m. ET (4 p.m. PT) that day. ULA is planning a live stream of launch coverage via its website starting about 20 minutes ahead of liftoff.

Amazon said the mission — known as Kuiper-1 or KA-1 (for Kuiper Atlas 1) — will put 27 Kuiper satellites into orbit at an altitude of 280 miles (450 kilometers).

ULA launched two prototype Kuiper satellites into orbit for testing in October 2023, but KA-1 will mark Amazon’s first full-scale launch of a batch of operational satellites designed to bring high-speed internet access to millions of people around the world.

“We’ve designed some of the most advanced communications satellites ever built, and every launch is an opportunity to add more capacity and coverage to our network,” Rajeev Badyal, vice president of Project Kuiper, said today in a blog posting. “We’ve done extensive testing on the ground to prepare for this first mission, but there are some things you can only learn in flight, and this will be the first time we’ve flown our final satellite design and the first time we’ve deployed so many satellites at once.”

Badyal said “this is just the start of our journey, and we have all the pieces in place to learn and adapt as we prepare to launch again and again over the coming years.”

According to Amazon, the Kuiper satellite design has gone through significant upgrades since the prototypes were launched in 2023. Amazon’s primary manufacturing facility is in Kirkland, Wash., with some of the components produced at Project Kuiper’s headquarters in nearby Redmond.

“We have improved the performance of every system and sub-system on board, including phased array antennas, processors, solar arrays, propulsion systems, and optical inter-satellite links,” Amazon said. “In addition, the satellites are coated in a dielectric mirror film unique to Kuiper that scatters reflected sunlight to help make them less visible to ground-based astronomers.”

The mission profile for KA-1 calls for deploying the satellites safely in orbit and establishing ground-to-space contact. The satellites would then use their electric propulsion systems to settle into their assigned orbits at an altitude of 392 miles (630 kilometers), under the management of Project Kuiper’s mission operations team in Redmond.

Under the current terms of its license from the Federal Communications Commission, Amazon is due to launch 3,232 Kuiper satellites by 2029, with half of those satellites going into orbit by mid-2026.

To accommodate the 27-satellite launch, ULA is using the most powerful configuration of the Atlas V rocket, with five solid rocket boosters added to the core booster. Amazon has reserved seven more Atlas V missions for Project Kuiper, and it’s already begun shipping and processing satellites for the next Florida launch.

Amazon has also reserved 38 launches on ULA’s larger Vulcan Centaur rocket, plus more than 30 launches on rockets provided by Arianespace, Blue Origin and SpaceX.

Project Kuiper’s ambitious deployment campaign is part of an effort to catch up with SpaceX’s Starlink satellite broadband network, which already has more than 7,000 satellites in orbit and 5 million subscribers. Eutelsat OneWeb is also going after the market for internet services provided by satellites in low Earth orbit.

Stan Shull, managing director for Alliance Velocity, noted this week that Amazon’s Project Kuiper now leads the list of Seattle-area space ventures when it comes to employment listings. According to Shull’s figures, Project Kuiper accounted for about 47% of the 1,149 open jobs in Washington state’s space industry as of March 31, compared with 21% for Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture and 19% for Starlink, which manufactures its satellites at SpaceX’s Redmond facility.

We’ve updated this report with the launch postponement on April 9..

The U.S. Space Force has added Kent, Wash.-based Stoke Space and California-based Rocket Lab USA to the list of providers for its $5.6 billion round of national security launches.

Each company will receive a $5 million task order to assess its specific capabilities for future launches. Stoke and Rocket Lab join Jeff Bezos’ Kent-based Blue Origin space venture as well as SpaceX and United Launch Alliance on the Pentagon’s current launch service list, known as Phase 3 Lane 1. For this “lane,” the Space Force can select from those five providers during an ordering period that runs through mid-2029, with an option for a five-year extension.

Stoke Space is offering its fully reusable Nova rocket, while Rocket Lab is offering its Neutron rocket. Both of those launch vehicles are still in development and haven’t yet flown in space. Rocket Lab is planning its first Neutron launch in late 2025. Stoke’s first Nova launch could also come as early as this year.

“Once Rocket Lab and Stoke Space complete their first successful launch, they will be eligible to compete for launch service task orders on Lane 1,” Lt. Col. Douglas Downs, materiel leader for space launch procurement at the Space Force’s Space Systems Command, said in a news release.

In a statement, Stoke Space said being selected for the national security launch program “is a testament to the company’s technical capabilities to meet the U.S. Space Force’s most stringent requirements.”

Previously: Stoke’s CEO explores innovative route to rocket reusability

The U.S. Space Force has chosen Marysville, Wash.-based Gravitics to build and fly an orbital carrier that could deliver maneuverable space vehicles to the final frontier — and have them ready to respond to future threats.

The project will be supported by up to $60 million in funding, to be provided through the Space Force’s SpaceWERX STRATFI program. That funding would come from government sources as well as private sources, Gravitics said today in a news release.

“We’re honored to partner with the U.S. Space Force on this critical initiative.” Gravitics CEO Colin Doughan said. “The Orbital Carrier is a game-changer, acting as a pre-positioned launch pad in space. It bypasses traditional launch constraints, enabling space vehicle operators to rapidly select a deployment orbit on-demand.”

In an illustration, Gravitics shows the Orbital Carrier as a cylindrical cargo module containing stacked-up spacecraft with folded-up solar panels. The timeline for development of the carrier wasn’t announced, but Gravitics said the newly announced deal will provide it with the “resources and support necessary to develop and demonstrate the Orbital Carrier platform.”

The project follows up on a $1.7 million contract that the SpaceForce’s SpaceWERX program awarded to Gravitics almost a year ago. That contract called upon Gravitics to adapt the architecture for its commercial space station modules to address the Space Force’s interest in beefing up rapid-response space operations — an initiative known as Tactically Responsive Space.

Over the past few weeks, U.S. military officials have sounded the alarm over Russian and Chinese efforts to execute “attack and defend” maneuvers using satellites in low Earth orbit — tactics that have been compared to orbital dogfighting. At a symposium in Denver, Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Space Force’s chief of space operations, said he was looking for more options that would enable the U.S. to gain superiority in any future orbital conflict.

Seattle’s Museum of Flight has brought its collection of space artifacts up to the present day, thanks to a rocket engine that’s been donated by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture.

The BE-3U rocket engine, which was used for on-the-ground development work that included hot-fire testing, was installed in the museum’s Charles Simonyi Space Gallery on Monday. Eventually, a 16-foot-tall model of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket will take its place beside the engine.

Two BE-3U engines power the upper stage of the New Glenn orbital-class rocket, which was sent into orbit from the Kent, Wash.-based company’s Florida launch pad for the first time in January. That mission served to test not only the rocket, but also prototype components for Blue Origin’s Blue Ring spacecraft platform. The next New Glenn launch is expected in late spring.

This isn’t the first time Bezos has played a role in getting rocket artifacts into the Museum of Flight. A decade ago, the museum unveiled pieces from the F-1 rocket engines that sent NASA’s Apollo 12 and Apollo 16 missions to the moon. The components from the discarded Saturn V first-stage boosters were recovered from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean with support from Bezos Expeditions.

The Simonyi Space Gallery — which is named after Charles Simonyi, a billionaire software pioneer and museum patron — highlights the recent history of spaceflight, including commercial space initiatives.

Other artifacts in the gallery include a full-scale mockup of a space shuttle fuselage that was used for training NASA astronauts; and a module from the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that Simonyi rode to the International Space Station for his second privately funded space trip in 2009.

BOTHELL, Wash. — From the outside, Portal Space Systems’ headquarters looks like a standard-issue office space in a Bothell business park. But inside, the Portal team is working to harness the heat of the sun, to speed up how spacecraft get around.

“Think about it as finally bringing what you see in Star Trek into reality in orbit, to actually move spacecraft the way Hollywood had originally intended,” Jeff Thornburg, Portal’s CEO and co-founder, said at today’s ribbon-cutting ceremony for the 8,000-square-foot development lab and HQ.

The hardware that’s spread across Portal’s lab tells you that the four-year-old venture is no typical business-park tenant: In one corner, there’s a gleaming vacuum chamber where components for Portal’s solar thermal propulsion system are being tested. In another corner, a 3D printer stands ready to turn out the parts for subscale test models of the system’s heat-exchanger thruster.

Portal plans to build the system into its Supernova satellite platform. Supernova is designed to use foldable mirrors to focus the sun’s rays onto the propulsion system’s heat exchanger. When ammonia passes through the heat exchanger, it rapidly builds up pressure and produces thrust.

Thornburg said the system provides several advantages over traditional rocket thrusters. For example, there’s no need for oxidizers or hard-to-handle cryogenic fuels. “We’re not burning anything,” Thornburg said. “We’re just concentrating the solar energy.”

The biggest advantage is that Supernova should be able to push itself and its attached payload into different orbits much more quickly than your typical spacecraft.

“It has the ability to maneuver like nothing else that exists in orbit, which means it can go from low Earth orbit or medium Earth orbit to geostationary orbits within hours or a day,” Thornburg said. “Or it can move from one orbit to another quickly to accomplish a commercial or a defense mission with speeds that typically take weeks and months.”

Thornburg’s engineering résumé includes stints at NASA, SpaceX, Stratolaunch and Amazon’s Project Kuiper, plus a role as CEO and founder of Interstellar Technologies. He co-founded Portal in 2021, along with Ian Vorbach and Prashaanth Ravindran.

“This company was started in the garage of my house in Bothell, with my wife finding out that I started yet another space company by surprise when mail arrived for Portal Space Systems in the inbox,” Thornburg recalled.

Portal began leasing the Bothell facility last year, and the workspace was re-engineered to accommodate a high-powered electrical induction system that simulates the sun’s heating power. Ravindran, who serves as Portal’s vice president of engineering, said the system can heat up components in the lab’s vacuum chamber to 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,700 degrees Fahrenheit) over the course of 15 to 20 seconds.

The company plans to start testing Supernova’s 3D-printed heat-exchanger thruster by the middle of this year. Thornburg said the first demonstrator spacecraft is due to launch next year, with a payload that will try out technologies aimed at improving space situational awareness.

Situational awareness and the capacity to change orbits rapidly are becoming increasingly important issues, due in part to the rapid proliferation of satellites in low Earth orbit, or LEO. Over the past decade, the number of active satellites in LEO has risen from 1,300 to more than 10,000 — and as many as 70,000 satellites could be launched to LEO over the next five years.

Another factor has to do with potential threats from America’s space rivals, China and Russia. This month, Pentagon officials warned that the Russians appeared to be maneuvering their satellites to practice “attack and defend tactics” in LEO. “The threat posture on orbit is much worse than most people realize,” Thornburg said.

He said Supernova’s orbit-changing capabilities could help U.S. satellites dodge threats from attacking satellites, or go after the satellites that pose such threats: “If you have the type of speed that we have, they’re not going to know what’s coming.”

Thornburg said Portal’s workforce currently consists of 35 employees and contractors. “We’ll have other engineers that are joining the team here in the next few weeks and months,” he said. So far, the company has raised $2.6 million in pre-seed funding. It has also received $5.5 million in small-business research grants, leading up to a $45 million boost orchestrated through the SpaceWERX STRATFI program.

At today’s ribbon-cutting ceremony, Portal received a boost from U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash. “It’s really exciting that you chose our region and all the resources that are here to support you,” DelBene said. “Folks come here because we have an incredible workforce. We have the innovation infrastructure to help support growth. It’s part of our DNA.”

Bothell Mayor Mason Thompson offered a welcome as well.

“We are legitimately happy that you are here,” he said. “We get to have aerospace along with our thriving life-science sector, and the first quantum computing manufacturer in the country. We’ve got a couple of different colleges, and we really hope that this is a place that can grow with you. … We can support you as you go from a garage, to your first facility, to beyond.”

Thornburg said the Bothell facility will be a “long-term R&D center for Portal.”

“We’re working with some of our customers on building up our manufacturing capabilities,” he said. “Over the next couple of years, we’ll be able to produce 12 spacecraft a year.”

After the ceremony, Thornburg told GeekWire that the site for the Supernova manufacturing facility could be chosen later this year, and that the team was looking at potential sites in the area between Bothell and Arlington.

“The proximity to Seattle is exactly right,” he said.

NASA says it has penciled in Blue Origin’s Blue Moon MK1 cargo lander to deliver a scientific payload to the moon’s south polar region as soon as this summer.

The uncrewed lander would rank as the largest spacecraft sent to the moon’s surface, and would set the stage for a larger crewed lander that would be used for moon missions in the 2030s. By that time, if all proceeds according to plan, SpaceX’s Starship would take over the top spot as the world’s most massive moon ship.

Blue Origin was created by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2000 and is headquartered in Kent, Wash. For years, Bezos has voiced a strong interest in lunar exploration. “It’s time to go back to the moon, but this time to stay,” he declared in 2017.

NASA’s payload for Blue Origin’s first mission to the moon is a suite of cameras that’s designed to record how the blast from Blue Moon’s engines disturbs the dirt and rocks at the lunar landing site. The data from that experiment — known as Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume Surface Studies, or SCALPSS — would be factored into the preparations for crewed landings.

Similar payloads flew on Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander, which conducted a partially successful mission on the moon last year; and on Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost M1 lander, which landed on the moon earlier this month. The data from the Blue Moon mission would give NASA a better sense of what to expect when a heavier spacecraft touches down.

Both Blue Origin and NASA have said they expect the first Blue Moon mission to take place this year, but NASA appeared to narrow down the time frame in a chart that was shown during a presentation at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas. The chart suggested that Blue Origin would take on the next mission for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, with launch set for August.

“That’s going to be on their Mark 1 Serial No. 1 lander,” Brad Bailey, NASA’s assistant deputy associate administrator for exploration, told the audience as he showed the chart. (Later missions were listed for Astrobotic in late 2025, and Intuitive Machines, Firefly and Draper in 2026.)

An August launch isn’t necessarily set in stone. Blue Moon is scheduled to launch on Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, which had its first liftoff in January and is still in its development and testing phase. After the first New Glenn launch, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said the second launch was planned for late spring. “We sort of treat the first three flights as development flights,” Limp said at the time.

The challenges associated with getting New Glenn and Blue Moon ready for a landmark moon mission could conceivably push the launch later in the year — and SCALPSS is likely to be only one of several payloads scheduled for delivery. We’ve reached out to Blue Origin and NASA for more information, and will update this report with anything we can pass along.

The next suborbital spaceflight planned by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is due to follow through on the dream of Bezos’ fiancee, Lauren Sanchez, to lead an all-woman crew — and that crew will include pop superstar Katy Perry and morning-TV host Gayle King.

Three advocates for women in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, will round out the six-person crew for a mission known as NS-31, Blue Origin announced today. The company says NS-31 will launch this spring. Update: The mission has been scheduled for April 14.

“This will be the first all-female flight crew since Valentina Tereshkova’s solo spaceflight in 1963,” Blue Origin said in a reference to the Soviet space pioneer.

In a posting to Threads, Sanchez called her crewmates “fearless explorers.”

“I really see this group as explorers, and storytellers, each of us about to be changed by a remarkable view of our beautiful planet,” she said. “The countdown starts now!”

Sanchez talked about her desire to go into space with other women more than two years ago in a Wall Street Journal interview. At the time, she said her five crewmates would be “women who are making a difference in the world and who are impactful and have a message to send.” 

“I’m super-excited about it. And a little nervous,” she said.

Sanchez, a licensed helicopter pilot and former TV news anchor, first started dating Bezos in 2019 after the announcement of his divorce from MacKenzie Scott. Reports of their engagement emerged in 2023.

In the WSJ Magazine interview, Sanchez said Bezos — who was on Blue Origin’s first crewed suborbital spaceflight in 2021 — would be watching from the sidelines when she takes her turn. “As much as he wants to go on this flight, I’m going to have to hold him back,” she told the magazine.

Here’s the rundown on Sanchez’s crewmates:

• Katy Perry is the biggest-selling female artist in Capitol Records’ history and one of the best-selling music artists of all time with more than 115 billion streams. Aside from being a global pop superstar, Katy is an active advocate of many philanthropic causes, including as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and the founder of the Firework Foundation.
• Gayle King is an award-winning journalist, co-host of “CBS Mornings,” editor-at-large of “Oprah Daily” and the host of “Gayle King in the House” on SiriusXM radio. “I don’t know how to explain being terrified and excited at the same time. It’s like how I felt about to deliver a baby,” King said on “CBS Mornings.”
• Aisha Bowe is a former NASA rocket scientist, entrepreneur and global STEM advocate. She is the CEO of STEMBoard, an engineering firm that provides advisory services to federal and commercial organizations; and the founder of LINGO, which aims to help students with their STEM education. Bowe referred to the upcoming flight on Instagram. “This is more than a personal dream,” she wrote. “It’s about breaking boundaries, representing what’s possible, and showing the next generation that space is for everyone.”
• Amanda Nguyen is a bioastronautics research scientist. She graduated from Harvard, and conducted research at Harvard Center for Astrophysics, MIT, NASA and the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences. “Thank you to the countless people who have made my dream of becoming an astronaut possible,” Nguyen said on Instagram.
• Kerianne Flynn is a producer for films including “This Changes Everything,” which explores the history of women in Hollywood; and “Lilly,” a tribute to fair-pay advocate Lilly Ledbetter. She’s also involved in community-building in New York City through board service and nonprofit work with The Allen-Stevenson School, The High Line and Hudson River Park. “I’m going to space!” Flynn said on Instagram.

Beginning with the first crewed flight in 2021, Blue Origin has sent 52 people on suborbital space trips. The list includes Star Trek captain William Shatner, TV host and football analyst Michael Strahan, and aerospace pioneers such as “Mercury 13” aviator Wally Funk and Black fighter pilot Ed Dwight.

Blue Origin’s most recent crewed mission took place just a couple of days ago. The company doesn’t typically discuss the ticket prices for its suborbital spaceflights, but it seems safe to assume that Sanchez and her crewmates won’t be paying full fare.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are turning into requirements for space operations, and Amazon Web Services is optimizing its products to reflect that view, according to the former Air Force major general who’s now in charge of AWS’ aerospace initiatives.

“AI, ML, generative AI have become table stakes for our future on-orbit systems and capabilities,” Clint Crosier, director of aerospace and satellite solutions at AWS, said today during Booz Allen Hamilton’s annual Space + AI Summit. “We have reached the limit of human capacity to digest petabytes and petabytes of data in real time and make any sort of intelligent decisions about them. We’ve culminated, so we must further embrace AI, ML and generative AI capabilities for the future.”

Crosier and other speakers at the summit, conducted at the headquarters of the Air & Space Forces Association in Virginia, pointed to the rapidly rising number of satellites in low Earth orbit as a major factor behind the need for more sophisticated AI tools. Over the past decade, that number has risen from about 1,300 to more than 10,000.

Merely keeping track of all those satellites is a challenging task — and it’s just as challenging to send all that data down to Earth for processing.

Enhancing the onboard capabilities of the satellites themselves — in effect, moving edge computing into orbit — is one of the strategies favored by AWS. In 2022, AWS and its commercial partners successfully tested a system that processed satellite image data in space. “We reduced overall bandwidth requirements by 42% while achieving 100% mission accomplishment,” Crosier said.

Crosier talked up the idea of turning cutting-edge innovations into commercial off-the-shelf components, or COTS. He said AWS and other players in the tech industry should always be looking at ways to optimize their systems to cope with the challenges of the space environment.

“We’re going to have to develop some purpose-built things optimized for allowing us to do advanced AI, ML and generative AI on orbit that may not exist today, but are going to be COTS tomorrow,” he said.

AWS is also working with NASA on a variety of projects aimed at harnessing the power of AI for space operations.

“NASA has already started porting many of their technical manuals into AWS’ generative AI capabilities, such that you can do a RAG chatbot right now in certain parts of NASA and say, ‘Give me all the specs on a human lander capability, and modify, you know, X or Y by mass or payload,'” Crosier said. “And the system will come back and provide you all that in recommendations.”

That capability could be a lifesaver for future missions to Mars, where communication challenges could make it difficult for astronauts to get real-time assistance from engineers back on Earth.

Crosier referred to the classic tale of Apollo 13 in 1970, when Mission Control scrambled to rescue the crew cope after an oxygen-tank explosion in space.

“Think about porting that into the future,” he said. “‘Houston, I have a problem’ becomes ‘Houston, I have a solution,’ because you’ve got this autonomous capability on the surface of Mars. Here’s all the in-situ resources I have. Here’s the storage and compute capability I have. Now go generate me three courses of action to solve the problem that I have. And gen-AI systems will bring back courses of action that will solve whatever challenges you’re facing.”

For years, NASA has been working on a similar project to harness AI for on-the-scene medical diagnosis in space.

“Sometimes somebody gets sick, for example, and depending on the orbit, it could take up to 40 minutes between you sending a signal from Mars until you get it back from Earth,” said Omar Hatamleh, who’s the chief AI officer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “So we’re creating something called ‘Doctor in a Box’ as well. Imagine, if you have medical issues, you can have interactions with these, and these systems are trained specifically on medical domains.”

Hatamleh said other types of AI systems could be trained as robotic construction workers — to build habitats on Mars before the humans arrive, or to extract the raw materials necessary to support them while they’re there.

He acknowledged that giving AI agents a bigger role in space exploration could raise challenges worthy of a science-fiction tale. For example, suppose a robot goes out on an expedition with two human astronauts, and both of the humans are injured in an accident. “Which one does the humanoid robot choose to come back to the base?” Hatamleh asked.

He noted that science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov came up with what he called the Three Laws of Robotics, the first of which declared that “a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”

“But what if we have on-the-edge systems? Humanoid robots will be surgeons on the surface of a distant planet. … The fact that it’s doing an incision on a person — that’s harming a person, and that goes completely against the laws of Asimov,” Hatamleh said. “So, even the most fundamental, basic laws that we abided by for a long time need to be re-evaluated, reassessed for the next evolution of these technological advances.”

This report has been updated to characterize Crosier’s views on the tech industry’s approach to space applications more precisely.

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 electrical power, and stirring up increasing levels of controversy.

Space-based data centers could play a key role in processing the massive amounts of imagery and other data provided by Earth observation satellites. Doing the computational heavy lifting in space would reduce the bandwidth requirements for Earth-to-ground data transmission.

Starcloud emerged from stealth a little less than a year ago when it announced a $2.4 million pre-seed investment round. The $21 million in fresh funding “allows us to accelerate our plans to build large data centers in space, and means that we are funded through at least the next two launches,” Johnston said.

Johnston said Starcloud’s 132-pound (60-kilogram) demonstrator satellite is destined to be launched into low Earth orbit this summer by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as part of the Bandwagon 4 rideshare mission.

“We will be running 100x more powerful GPU compute than has ever been operated in space, with top-of-the-line, data-center-grade terrestrial NVIDIA GPUs on board,” he said. NVIDIA is providing the chips at a discount through its startup-friendly Inception program.

Johnston said the demonstrator satellite will help Starcloud test “training, inference and edge compute workloads for other satellites.”

Johnston is a former associate at McKinsey & Co. who also co-founded an e-commerce venture called Opontia. Starcloud’s other founders are chief technology officer Ezra Feilden, whose resume includes engineering experience at Oxford Space Systems and Airbus Defense and Space; and chief engineer Adi Oltean, who worked as a principal software engineer at SpaceX’s Starlink facility in Redmond, Wash.

The Starcloud team currently has five members, including lead mechanical engineer Bailey Montaño, who worked previously at Helion Energy and SpaceX. Johnston said he expects the size of the team to double in the months ahead.

“Starcloud” follows in the footsteps of other starry names, ranging from SpaceX’s Starship and Boeing’s Starliner to Gravitics’ StarMax space modules and the Starlab space station planned by Voyager Space and Airbus. But Johnston said the principal reason behind his company’s name shift is to head off any potential confusion with another tech company.

“Apparently, Lumen Technologies has the right to ‘Lumen’ for data centers,” he said.

You might think sex in space would be an out-of-this-world experience — but based on the scientific evidence so far, low-gravity intimacy isn’t likely to be as much of a high as it sounds. In fact, dwelling too deeply on the challenges of off-Earth sex and reproduction could be a real mood-killer.

“In one’s fantasies, or on a quick imaginary level, you think, ‘Wow, think of the possibilities,'” says Mary Roach, author of “Packing for Mars,” a book about the science of living in space. “But in fact, to stay coupled is a little tough, because … you know, you bounce apart. So, I said this to one of the astronauts at NASA, and he said, ‘Nothing a little duct tape won’t take care of.'”

Fortunately, Roach won’t be delving too deeply into the downside during her Valentine’s Day talk at Seattle’s Museum of Flight. At the 21-and-over event, she plans to focus on the lighter side of living in space — including zero-gravity sex. In the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast, Roach provides an update on “Packing for Mars,” plus a preview of tonight’s “Mars Love Affair” presentation.

Have astronauts already “done it” in space? More than 15 years ago, Roach devoted a not-insignificant amount of time trying to track down the truth behind long-running rumors about high-altitude affairs, mostly to no avail. NASA keeps mum on the subject as a matter of policy, but Roach did pick up some intel from the Russians. She recalls asking a former cosmonaut whether sex happened in space.

“Of course,'” she says she was told. “You have sex by hand.”

The most scientifically illuminating information came from biologists who study the behavior of animals that mate in water, such as dolphins, otters and spotted seals. Roach learned that those species spend a good deal of energy just hanging onto each other in the coital position.

To make zero-G intimacy easier for humans, some enterprising souls have suggested new types of sexual aids — ranging from straps and “snuggle tunnels” to zero-gravity suits specifically designed to make the best of the experience.

Does zero gravity enhance or deaden arousal? When astronauts first go into zero-G, they typically experience a shift in fluids from the upper body to the lower body, swelling up their faces and heads. That can lead to a feeling of stuffiness — and more significantly, eye problems. Fluid shifts might also affect blood flow to sexual organs, although the evidence is debatable.

“There were varying opinions on that,” Roach says. Shuttle astronaut Mike Mullane said in his autobiography that he “could have drilled through kryptonite,” she notes. “And then one of the Apollo guys was like, ‘Yeah, not much happening.'”

The space sex issue isn’t just a matter of prurient interest. In their recently published book, “A City on Mars,” Kelly and Zach Weinersmith say there’s been too little research into how reduced gravity affects pregnancy and early development. The evidence so far has led some scientists to voice concerns.

Roach agrees that more research is needed. “If our ultimate goal is to one day colonize other celestial bodies — if that’s what we’re trying to do — it kind of behooves us to figure out if we can even do that,” she says.

Space sex isn’t the only topic covered in “Packing for Mars,” and it’s not likely to be the only topic Roach talks about at the Museum of Flight event. She also researched the psychological effects of long-term confinement in a spacecraft, the challenges of preparing and consuming food in space, and how human waste in space is processed (and in some cases recycled).

If this evening’s conversation strays into other weird topics having to do with bodily functions, Roach is prepared to go there. She’s also written books about earthbound sex (“Bonk”), the digestive system (“Gulp”), the challenges that warfighters face (“Grunt”) and even the science of human cadavers (“Stiff”). She says her next book, “Replaceable You,” will focus on “different bits and pieces of the body, and efforts to fabricate them, make them, replace them, and why that works and doesn’t work.”

How does she come up with this stuff? “It’s just me thrashing around, and emailing people, and turning over rocks and going, ‘Is this interesting enough?'” she says. “It’s me following my own curiosity and landing on things that I feel are interesting.”

So, would she ever consider landing on Mars? “Hell, no,” she says. “Mars would be amazing, but I’m too grumpy and complaining to be in a small space for that long, with such a limited sense of whether I’ll get back alive. But the moon — I would love to go to the moon.”

“Mars Love Affair: A Night With Mary Roach” begins today at 6:30 p.m. at Seattle’s Museum of Flight, and will be preceded by a 6 p.m. VIP reception. Attendees must be 21 or older. For further information about the event and ticket options, check out the museum’s website.

My co-host for the Fiction Science podcast is Dominica Phetteplace, an award-winning writer who is a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop and lives in San Francisco. To learn more about Phetteplace, visit her website, DominicaPhetteplace.com.

Fiction Science is included in FeedSpot’s 100 Best Sci-Fi Podcasts. Take a look at the original version of this item on Cosmic Log to get Mary Roach’s recommendations for further reading, and stay tuned for future episodes of the Fiction Science podcast via Apple, Spotify, Player.fm, Pocket Casts and Podchaser. If you like Fiction Science, please rate the podcast and subscribe to get alerts for future episodes.

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture plans to cut about 10% of its workforce, according to an announcement Thursday by the Kent, Wash.-based company’s CEO.

“Our primary focus in 2025 and beyond is to scale our manufacturing output and launch cadence with speed, decisiveness, and efficiency for our customers,” Dave Limp said in an email to employees that was obtained by GeekWire (read in full below). “We grew and hired incredibly fast in the last few years, and with that growth came more bureaucracy and less focus than we needed.”

Limp said the makeup of Blue Origin must change to ensure that roles are best aligned with executing on company priorities. Positions in engineering, R&D, and program/project management are being eliminated, and layers of management are being thinned, he added.

The layoffs will affect roughly 1,400 of the company’s nearly 14,000 employees and come just a few weeks after the first successful launch of the company’s heavy-lift New Glenn rocket. It was a milestone achievement for Bezos, the Amazon founder who started Blue Origin in 2000.

In an earlier all-hands meeting with employees on Thursday, Limp said, “We just came to the painful conclusion that we aren’t set up for the kind of success that we really wanted to have,” as Blue Origin aims to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and its dominant Falcon 9. Limp added that the company needs a culture that is “quick, nimble, decisive, and very focused on our customers,” according to Reuters.

Employees impacted by the layoffs were to be notified via email Thursday morning.

Blue Origin’s workforce went through a rapid growth phase in recent years. The tally was less 1,000 as recently as 2018, rose to 6,000 by 2022, and hit 11,000 in 2023 before growing to about 14,000 employees today.

Blue Origin went through a less significant round of layoffs in 2023, focusing on the areas of human resources and talent acquisition.

The largest number of employees work at the company’s headquarters in Kent and other offices in the Seattle area. Other major facilities include Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas, where the suborbital New Shepard rocket ship is launched; its rocket factory and launch facility on Florida’s Space Coast, where the orbital-class New Glenn rocket is built and launched; and its rocket engine factory in Alabama.

Limp was brought over from Amazon in late 2023 to accelerate progress on New Glenn. At this week’s Commercial Space Conference in Washington, D.C., he touched upon New Glenn’s progress as well as Blue Origin’s effort to build a lunar lander for NASA’s use. Limp said that the next New Glenn launch is set for “late spring,” and that an uncrewed prototype lander could be sent to the moon as early as this year.

Blue Origin’s career website currently lists more than 350 job openings, and in his email to employees, Limp said the company will “continue to invest, invent, and hire hundreds of positions.”

The company’s cutbacks didn’t come as a complete surprise to Stan Shull, the founder and managing director of Alliance Velocity, a space-centric consulting firm.

“From the end of October to the end of January, the number of open jobs at Blue Origin in Washington state dropped by 57%,” he told GeekWire in an email. “On a percentage basis, this is similar to what occurred in the fall of 2023, when they also had some headcount reductions.”

Shull suggested that the size of Blue Origin’s workforce might start to level off, particularly in the Seattle area, as the company shifts from engineering to production, and as it focuses on manufacturing rockets and engines.

“However, there’s still a ton of engineering work going on at Blue Origin,” he wrote. “In addition to rockets, the company’s ambitious agenda includes a space station, a space logistics vehicle, and lunar landers for both cargo and crew — all still under development. There’s also some speculation they are already working on developing the New Armstrong, a huge launch vehicle even bigger than the massive New Glenn rocket. … Overall, I have no concerns about Blue Origin.”

This story contains reporting by GeekWire contributing editor Alan Boyle.

Read the full email from CEO Dave Limp to Blue Origin employees:

Folks,  

We just finished this morning’s meeting, during which I gave an update on our organization. As I mentioned, we have made the tough decision to reduce our workforce by about 10%. The impact this has is not lost on any of us—we are saying goodbye to our friends and colleagues who have helped us build Blue into what it is today. 

I know this is a lot to absorb, and I would like to explain how we got here. Over the last few months, as a leadership team, we have worked together to define our 2025 Annual Operating Plan and growth strategy. Our primary focus in 2025 and beyond is to scale our manufacturing output and launch cadence with speed, decisiveness, and efficiency for our customers. We grew and hired incredibly fast in the last few years, and with that growth came more bureaucracy and less focus than we needed. It also became clear that the makeup of our organization must change to ensure our roles are best aligned with executing these priorities. Sadly, this resulted in eliminating some positions in engineering, R&D, and program/project management and thinning out our layers of management.  

While I acknowledge that these messages are better delivered personally and individually, the reach of these changes across multiple locations and teams makes that difficult. We will notify impacted employees immediately via their work and personal email addresses of their status with Blue. We will also email employees who are not impacted to confirm their employment with Blue. Both emails will arrive by 7:30 AM PT/10:30 AM ET today. While our sites are open, I encourage you to work from home for the rest of the day if your role allows you to do so. 

We are doing what we can to support everyone impacted. The email notifications will provide support details, which include severance packages, COBRA coverage, career support services, and access to counseling through our Employee Assistance Program.  

Let me add that I am extremely confident in the enormous opportunities in front of us and have never been more optimistic about our mission. We will continue to invest, invent, and hire hundreds of positions in areas that will help us achieve our goals and best serve our customers. We will be a stronger, faster, and more customer-focused company that consistently meets and exceeds our commitments. This year alone, we will land on the Moon, deliver a record number of incredible engines, and fly New Glenn and New Shepard on a regular cadence.  

To our colleagues who are impacted today, thank you so much for your hard work and passion for our mission. I hope we all support one another with grace and empathy while upholding our leadership principles during this time. 

Dave

For the first time, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has put its New Shepard suborbital rocket ship through a couple of minutes’ worth of moon-level gravity.

The uncrewed mission, known as NS-29, sent 30 research payloads on a 10-minute trip from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas. For this trip, the crew capsule was spun up to 11 revolutions per minute, as opposed to the typical half-revolution per minute. The resulting centrifugal force was equivalent to one-sixth of Earth’s gravity, which is what would be felt on the moon.

The point of the exercise was to test how the payloads performed during the conditions they would face during future lunar missions — for example, how well they could process moon dirt to extract oxygen and other resources, or how well they could work to manufacture solar cells for Blue Origin’s Blue Alchemist project.

Blue Origin had to call off an initial launch attempt last week due to a glitch in the avionics system, but the balky equipment was replaced and checked out in advance of today’s launch. Liftoff came at 10 a.m. CT (8 a.m. PT). New Shepard’s hydrogen-powered booster sent the capsule up to a height of 64.6 miles (104 kilometers), just above the 100-kilometer Karman Line that marks the internationally accepted boundary of outer space.

After stage separation, launch commentator Alice Watts reported that the capsule achieved “full lunar-G roll.” Then the booster landed itself on a pad not far from where it was launched, while the capsule descended to a parachute-aided landing in the Texas scrublands. One of the three parachutes didn’t open as quickly as planned, but Blue Origin said that had no effect on the landing sequence.

The payloads will be taken from the capsule and checked to see how they performed under lunar conditions.

Previously, suborbital payloads could get only a few seconds’ worth of moon gravity during parabolic airplane flights. “Between that and actually going to the moon sits New Shepard,” launch commentator Joel Eby explained during today’s webcast. “It’s kind of filling that sweet spot in the middle, showing that these technologies can be tested at a lower cost, with immediate results and over minutes of data collected, not just a few seconds.”

More than half of the payloads were supported through NASA’s Flight Opportunities program. Four payloads were built by Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin subsidiary, and tested technologies focusing on excavating and processing lunar soil. Another payload, created by Kennedy Space Center and its research partners, was designed to study how moon dust gets electrically charged and lifted up when exposed to ultraviolet light.

The results from the experiments will be factored into future lunar missions, including NASA’s Artemis campaign to send astronauts to the lunar surface by as early as 2027.

Phil Joyce, Blue Origin’s senior vice president for the New Shepard program, hailed today’s milestone in a mission recap. “New Shepard’s ability to provide a lunar gravity environment is an extremely unique and valuable capability as researchers set their sights on a return to the moon,” Joyce said. “This enables researchers to test lunar technologies at a fraction of the cost, rapidly iterate, and test again in a significantly compressed time frame.” 

Today’s mission also carried thousands of postcards to space and back on behalf of the Club for the Future, Blue Origin’s educational foundation. The cards will be returned to the students who sent them in for a suborbital ride.

Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard boosters and capsules are built at the company’s headquarters in Kent, Wash. In addition to the Kent HQ and the Texas spaceport, Blue Origin has a rocket factory and launch pad in Florida (where its orbital-class New Glenn rocket was launched for the first time last month) and a rocket engine factory in Alabama.

Amazon is providing a sneak peek at the satellites that are being shipped to Florida for the launch of its Project Kuiper broadband network — well, maybe not the satellites, but at least their containers.

“Late last year, we began shipping flight-ready satellites, and even more have been on their way in recent weeks,” the Project Kuiper team said in a posting to LinkedIn.

The first batch of production-level satellites is due for launch sometime in the next few months on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. That’ll follow up on the successful testing of two prototype satellites that were launched on an Atlas V in October 2023.

Eventually, 3,232 satellites are slated to go into orbit to provide high-speed internet service. Under the terms of Amazon’s license from the Federal Communications Commission, half of those satellites are to be launched by mid-2026.

Project Kuiper would provide added competition for SpaceX’s Starlink network, which currently dominates the market for satellite broadband connectivity with 5 million subscribers. Amazon is planning to start rolling out Project Kuiper services by the end of this year.

The manufacturing center for Project Kuiper’s satellites is in Kirkland, Wash., but the spacecraft have to be sent to Florida for processing and integration for launch. Amazon has kept imagery of the actual satellites close to the vest, apparently for proprietary reasons, but the pictures released this week show containers being prepared for shipping.

Rajeev Badyal, Amazon’s vice president of technology for Project Kuiper, passed along the pictures in his own LinkedIn post and said he was “excited to share a behind-the-scenes look at our satellites shipping out to Cape Canaveral.”

“From our Ka-band phased array antennas to our active propulsion systems and 100 Gbps laser links, we’re launching some of the most advanced communications satellites ever built, and we expect the extra invention will pay off for our customers,” Badyal wrote. “Lots of work still ahead, but we’re getting closer every day to the start of a full-scale deployment.”

Panos Panay, Amazon’s senior vice president for devices and services, also chimed in on LinkedIn. “We’re not just building satellites, we’re working to unlock Internet connectivity for tens of millions of people around the world,” he wrote.

Seattle-area venture capital firm Fuse wants to light a spark for entrepreneurs focusing on the final frontier, and it’s willing to invest a million dollars to turn a good idea into a great startup.

The Fuse Space Program will focus on the Seattle space ecosystem in particular, said Brendan Wales, founding partner at the Bellevue, Wash.-based firm.

“There’s going to be a huge funnel of people spinning out of Blue Origin and Starlink and SpaceX and Boeing that are going to go build these next-generation companies, and we want to be there for them,” Wales told GeekWire. “We want people to know that we’re there to back them at Day Zero.”

Fuse has already been there with financial backing for a couple of space ventures: Redmond, Wash.-based Lumen Orbit, which aims to put data centers in Earth orbit; and Colorado-based Quindar, which markets spacecraft management software. Wales said the CEOs of Lumen and Quindar will serve as “venture scouts” for the Fuse Space Program.

The basic idea is that Fuse will provide $1 million or more in pre-seed funding for promising space startups. Those investments will come in part from Fuse’s second venture fund, a $250 million chunk of capital that Fuse raised in 2023. “We imagine it’s going to be 10 companies in the next few years, because we’ll invest more over time,” Wales said.

Wales said he’s intrigued by ventures that facilitate space-based networking services. “We think there’s a ton of opportunity in and around performance and security, because you’re going to have important data up there, and you’ve got to make sure there are no issues,” he said.

But as far as he’s concerned, the sky’s the limit when it comes to startup opportunities in space — particularly once SpaceX’s Starship super-rocket enters commercial service. “It’s not like we’re seeing a lot there yet, but I do think space tourism is going to be a huge category,” Wales said.

Fuse’s founding partners are more familiar with the startup scene than the space scene, but the ideas that come in will be vetted by limited partners who specialize in the space industry.

Wales emphasized that the space venture program will focus on pre-seed funding rather than later-stage investments. “If we’re going to be there at Day Zero, which is our preference with the Fuse Space Program, the valuations aren’t going to be $50 million,” he said. “We want to be down there at the ground floor.”

Although Fuse is flexible when it comes to its portfolio’s geographical balance, Wales will be keeping an especially close eye on the Seattle space ecosystem.

“We are five minutes away from a city that designs and manufactures 80% of the world’s satellites, right? For us not to own that market of entrepreneurs is a missed opportunity,” he said. “We’re going to wake up every day so when people are spinning out of those companies, they call us. One day, maybe we can be perceived as the best investor in the world in space because of that advantage.”

For the first time ever, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has put a payload in orbit, using its heavy-lift New Glenn rocket.

The two-stage rocket lifted off from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 2:03 a.m. ET Thursday (11:03 p.m. PT tonight). Cheers could be heard coming from Blue Origin employees watching the launch.

After stage separation, New Glenn’s first-stage booster executed an autonomous descent with the aim of landing on a barge stationed hundreds of miles offshore.

The booster, nicknamed “So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance,” missed the target. “We did in fact lose the booster,” launch commentator Ariane Cornell said. Landing the booster would have been a bonus, but it wasn’t considered a requirement for mission success.

The prime objective of the mission, known as NG-1, was to test the communications and control systems for Blue Ring, a multi-mission space mobility platform that’s under development at Blue Origin.

For Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin, and for Bezos, the mere fact that New Glenn made it to orbit was at least as significant as the Blue Ring Pathfinder test. Although the company has launched smaller New Shepard rockets on suborbital spaceflights for a decade, it had never before put a payload into Earth orbit.

That changed tonight.

NG-1’s success is expected to open the way for a host of applications that Blue Origin aims to support — ranging from satellite constellations to moon missions to a commercial space station.

“We need to lower the cost of access to space … and that’s what New Glenn, our orbital vehicle, is all about,” Bezos said at the DealBook Summit in December.

Success could also mean more competition for Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which currently dominates the orbital launch industry. SpaceX has already launched its workhorse Falcon 9 rockets eight times this month, and is due to conduct the seventh flight test of its super-heavy-lift Starship launch system in Texas on Thursday.

New Glenn’s origin story goes back to 2012. Three years into the design and development effort, Bezos made a splash when he announced that the orbital-class rocket, named after pioneering NASA astronaut John Glenn, would be built at a 750,000-square-foot Florida factory and launched from Cape Canaveral.

Since then, Bezos has spent billions of dollars funding Blue Origin, with most of that money going toward New Glenn.

The rocket stands more than 320 feet (98 meters) high and features a 7-meter (23-foot-wide) payload fairing, which Blue Origin says can provide twice the volume of a standard 5-meter fairing. An entire New Shepard rocket could fit within the fairing, with room to spare on the sides.

New Glenn’s first stage is powered by seven of Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines, fueled with liquefied natural gas. The second stage makes use of two hydrogen-fueled BE-3U engines. Maximum thrust at liftoff is 3.8 million pounds, which is about half the thrust that was generated by the Saturn V moon rockets of the Apollo era. The rocket should be able to put up to 99,000 pounds of payload into low Earth orbit, which is 50 percent more than NASA’s space shuttle could carry.

The road to space hasn’t always run smooth. For example, Blue Origin had to overcome problems that were encountered during development of New Glenn’s BE-4 rocket engines. And on Monday, the first attempt to launch New Glenn had to be scrubbed due to a technical problem. Blue Origin attributed that scrub to “ice forming in a purge line on an auxiliary power unit that powers some of our hydraulic systems.” The issue was resolved in time for tonight’s launch.

NG-1’s primary payload was Blue Ring Pathfinder, which was designed to demonstrate the technologies that Blue Origin is incorporating in its Blue Ring vehicle. The development effort is supported by a Defense Innovation Unit program aimed at facilitating greater in-space mobility for the Pentagon. NG-1 will also serve as Blue Origin’s first certification flight for the National Security Space Launch program.

The rocket’s second stage sent the payload into a highly elliptical orbit that ranged from 1,490 to 12,000 miles (2,400 to 19,300 kilometers) in altitude. That orbit was meant to test the capabilities of the in-space system at those heights.

“The Blue Ring Pathfinder is receiving data and performing well,” Blue Origin said in a mission update posted to X. The test was expected to last about six hours, and then the second stage would be put into a safe parking orbit.

New Glenn’s first-stage booster is designed to fly itself to an at-sea touchdown on a landing platform vessel that’s been christened Jacklyn as a tribute to Jeff Bezos’ mother. The fact that the booster missed its target after tonight’s launch didn’t faze Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp.

“I’m incredibly proud New Glenn achieved orbit on its first attempt,” Limp said in a news release. “We knew landing our booster, ‘So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance,’ on the first try was an ambitious goal. We’ll learn a lot from today and try again at our next launch this spring. Thank you to all of Team Blue for this incredible milestone.” 

Blue Origin says it has several New Glenn vehicles in production at its Florida factory, and has filled out a “full customer manifest” for the months ahead.

High-profile missions include satellite launches to low Earth orbit for Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband constellation and for AST SpaceMobile’s space-based cellular network. Looking farther out, New Glenn is due to launch twin orbiters to Mars for NASA’s ESCAPADE mission.

Thanks to launch photographer Trevor Mahlmann for permission to publish his images of the New Glenn launch. For more from Mahlmann, check out TMahlmann.com.

Kent, Wash.-based Stoke Space says it’s raised $260 million in a new founding round to finish the development of its fully reusable Nova rocket and complete construction of a launch complex in Florida.

Investors in the Series C funding round include Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Glade Brook Capital Partners, Industrious Ventures, Leitmotif, Point72 Ventures, Seven Seven Six, the University of Michigan, Woven Capital and Y Combinator. The fresh investment brings total funding to $480 million.

“We deeply appreciate the confidence investors have placed in Stoke and our mission,” Andy Lapsa, CEO and co-founder of Stoke Space, said today in a news release. “This new investment validates our progress and enables us to accelerate the development of technologies that will redefine access to and from space.”

The funding round comes just weeks after Stoke’s successful test firing of its first-stage Zenith rocket engine on a test stand at the company’s facility in Moses Lake, Wash. That hot-fire test of the full-flow staged combustion engine marked a significant step in the development of the two-stage Nova rocket, which is slated for its first orbital test flight as early as this year. Stoke tested the technology for its second stage in a brief up-and-down flight in 2023.

Meanwhile, the company is building out its launch facility at Space Launch Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, the place where John Glenn’s milestone orbital flight began in 1962. The new funding round will support that work as well as enhancements to Stoke’s Kent headquarters and Moses Lake test facility.

Stoke’s vision is to create a fully reusable medium-lift rocket that would fill a niche alongside SpaceX’s heavy-lift Starship launch vehicle.

“Rapid and reliable reuse of a rocket’s upper stage is the last big challenge to solve before mobility to and from space becomes akin to other forms of transportation,” Lapsa said. “It represents a significant inflection in the space economy, and in turn opens the door to an incredible set of business opportunities that make life more vibrant on and off Earth.”

Previously: Stoke explores innovative route to rocket reusability

Over the course of just a few hours today, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture made two adjustments to the schedule for launching its heavy-lift New Glenn rocket to orbit for the first time.

At first, Blue Origin said it was planning to attempt liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Launch Complex 36 tonight, during a three-hour launch window beginning at 1 a.m. ET Tuesday (10 p.m. PT Monday). But less than two and a half hours later, the company pushed back the launch date to the same time frame early Thursday ET (late Wednesday PT).

No reason was immediately given for the quick change, but in today’s first announcement, Blue Origin acknowledged that a “poor weather forecast at LC-36 could result in missing” tonight’s launch window.

The schedule shifts came after Blue Origin aborted its first honest-to-goodness orbital launch attempt early today. Blue Origin said the launch was scrubbed “due to ice forming in a purge line on an auxiliary power unit that powers some of our hydraulic systems.” In the days before that scrub, Blue Origin delayed New Glenn’s launch twice because of rough seas in an area of the Atlantic Ocean where a barge has been stationed for a booster landing attempt.

Weather conditions at the launch pad are expected to improve after tonight, but conditions in the landing zone may not be as good, according to the Space Force. Blue Origin is expected to stream coverage of the countdown via its website, starting about an hour before the projected launch time.

For Blue Origin, there’s a lot riding on New Glenn’s mission, known as NG-1. Although the company has launched smaller New Shepard rockets on suborbital spaceflights for a decade, it has never put a payload into Earth orbit. That would change with a successful New Glenn launch.

The primary objective for NG-1 is to put a payload into orbit to test telemetry, communications and control systems for Blue Ring, a multi-mission space mobility vehicle that Blue Origin is developing.

If New Glenn meets with success, that would mean more competition for Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which currently dominates the orbital launch industry. It would also open the way for a host of applications that Blue Origin aims to support — ranging from satellite constellations to moon missions to a commercial space station.

“We need to lower the cost of access to space … and that’s what New Glenn, our orbital vehicle, is all about,” Bezos said at the DealBook Summit in December.

New Glenn’s origin story goes back to 2012. Three years into the design and development effort, Bezos made a splash when he announced that the orbital-class rocket, named after pioneering NASA astronaut John Glenn, would be built at a 750,000-square-foot Florida factory and launched from Cape Canaveral.

The rocket stands more than 320 feet (98 meters) high and features a 7-meter (23-foot-wide) payload fairing, which Blue Origin says can provide twice the volume of a standard 5-meter fairing. An entire New Shepard rocket could fit within the fairing, with room to spare on the sides.

New Glenn’s first stage is powered by seven of Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines, fueled with liquefied natural gas. The second stage makes use of two hydrogen-fueled BE-3U engines. Maximum thrust at liftoff is 3.8 million pounds, which is about half the thrust that was generated by the Saturn V moon rockets of the Apollo era. The rocket should be able to put up to 99,000 pounds of payload into low Earth orbit, which is 50 percent more than NASA’s space shuttle could carry.

The road to space hasn’t always run smooth. For example, Blue Origin had to overcome problems that were encountered during development of New Glenn’s BE-4 rocket engines. Success is by no means guaranteed.

New Glenn’s primary payload is Blue Ring Pathfinder, which will demonstrate the technologies that Blue Origin is incorporating in its Blue Ring vehicle. The development effort is supported by a Defense Innovation Unit program aimed at facilitating greater in-space mobility for the Pentagon. NG-1 will also serve as Blue Origin’s first certification flight for the National Security Space Launch program.

The rocket’s second stage is slated to send the payload into a highly elliptical orbit that ranges from 1,490 to 12,000 miles (2,400 to 19,300 kilometers) in altitude. That orbit is meant to test the capabilities of the in-space system at those heights.

The first-stage booster is designed to fly itself to an at-sea landing, hundreds of miles offshore, on a custom-built barge that’s been christened Jacklyn as a tribute to Jeff Bezos’ mother.

Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp emphasized that the test mission’s success won’t depend on whether or not the booster sticks the landing. “Our objective is to reach orbit. Anything beyond that is a bonus,” Limp said in posting to X. “Landing our booster offshore is ambitious — but we’re going for it.  No matter what, we will learn a lot.”

The “no-matter-what” sentiment is reflected in the nickname that’s been given to the booster: “So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance.”

Blue Origin says it has several New Glenn vehicles in production at its Florida factory, and has filled out a “full customer manifest” for the months ahead.

High-profile missions include satellite launches to low Earth orbit for Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband constellation and for AST SpaceMobile’s space-based cellular network. Looking farther out, New Glenn is due to launch twin orbiters to Mars for NASA’s ESCAPADE mission.

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture counted down to the final hour tonight, but in the end, the company had to postpone the first-ever orbital launch of its heavy-lift New Glenn rocket due to a stubborn technical glitch.

The launch from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station was scrubbed a few minutes after 3 a.m. ET (midnight PT). Tonight’s three-hour launch window was due to close at 4 a.m. ET.

“We are standing down on today’s launch attempt to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window,” launch commentator Ariane Cornell said. “We are reviewing opportunities for our next launch attempt.”

Liftoff had already been delayed twice over the past few days due to concerns about rough seas in the area of the Atlantic where New Glenn’s first-stage booster was slated to land — and the fact that the seas had settled down raised hopes that the launch could take place tonight. But it was not to be.

Whenever it takes place, this would be a milestone launch: Although Blue Origin has been launching much smaller New Shepard rockets on suborbital spaceflights for a decade, it has never tried putting a payload into Earth orbit. That would change with New Glenn’s liftoff.

If New Glenn meets with success, that would mean more competition for Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which currently dominates the orbital launch industry. It would also open the way for a host of applications that Blue Origin aims to support — ranging from satellite constellations to moon missions to a commercial space station.

“We need to lower the cost of access to space … and that’s what New Glenn, our orbital vehicle, is all about,” Bezos said at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit in December.

New Glenn’s origin story goes back to 2012. Three years into the design and development effort, Bezos made a splash when he announced that the orbital-class rocket, named after pioneering NASA astronaut John Glenn, would be built at a 750,000-square-foot Florida factory and launched from Cape Canaveral.

The rocket stands more than 320 feet (98 meters) high and features a 7-meter (23-foot-wide) payload fairing, which Blue Origin says can provide twice the volume of a standard 5-meter fairing. An entire New Shepard rocket could fit within the fairing, with room to spare on the sides.

New Glenn’s first stage is powered by seven of Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines, fueled with liquefied natural gas. The second stage makes use of two hydrogen-fueled BE-3U engines. Maximum thrust at liftoff is 3.8 million pounds, which is about half the thrust that was generated by the Saturn V moon rockets of the Apollo era. The rocket should be able to put up to 99,000 pounds of payload into low Earth orbit, which is 50 percent more than NASA’s space shuttle could carry.

The road to space hasn’t always run smooth. For example, Blue Origin had to overcome problems that were encountered during development of New Glenn’s BE-4 rocket engines. Success is by no means guaranteed.

The prime objective of this mission, known as NG-1, is to reach orbit safely with Blue Origin’s Blue Ring Pathfinder, a technology demonstration payload that’s designed to test the telemetry, communications and control systems for the company’s Blue Ring multi-mission space mobility platform.

The test mission is part of the Defense Innovation Unit’s campaign to facilitate greater in-space mobility for the Pentagon. NG-1 will also serve as Blue Origin’s first certification flight for the Pentagon’s National Security Space Launch program.

New Glenn’s second stage is slated to send the payload into a highly elliptical orbit that ranges from 1,490 to 12,000 miles (2,400 to 19,300 kilometers) in altitude. That unusual orbit is meant to test the capabilities of the in-space system and the ground-based infrastructure at those orbital heights.

The first-stage booster is designed to fly itself to an at-sea landing, hundreds of miles offshore, on a custom-built barge that’s been christened Jacklyn as a tribute to Jeff Bezos’ mother. But sea conditions have to be calm enough for a safe landing, and over the past week, the conditions had twice been judged too rough to proceed.

Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp emphasized that the test mission’s success won’t depend on whether or not the booster sticks the landing. “Our objective is to reach orbit. Anything beyond that is a bonus,” Limp said in posting to X. “Landing our booster offshore is ambitious — but we’re going for it.  No matter what, we will learn a lot.”

Blue Origin says it has several New Glenn vehicles in production at its Florida factory, and has filled out a “full customer manifest” for the months ahead.

High-profile missions include satellite launches to low Earth orbit for Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband constellation and for AST SpaceMobile’s space-based cellular network. Looking farther out, New Glenn is due to launch twin orbiters to Mars for NASA’s ESCAPADE mission.

This is an updated version of a report first published on Jan. 11.

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says it’s delaying the first-ever launch of its orbital-class New Glenn rocket due to unfavorable weather conditions for landing the first-stage booster.

Liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Launch Complex 36 in Florida had been scheduled for no earlier than 1 a.m. ET Friday (10 p.m. PT tonight). But in an update posted to the X social-media platform, Blue Origin said the attempt has been rescheduled for a three-hour launch window that opens at 1 a.m. ET Sunday (10 p.m. PT Saturday).

The schedule shift was made “due to a high sea state in the Atlantic where we hope to land our booster,” Blue Origin said. Video coverage of the countdown is expected to be streamed via BlueOrigin.com starting about an hour before liftoff.

New Glenn, which is named after the late pioneer astronaut John Glenn, is due to launch Blue Origin’s Blue Ring Pathfinder, a payload that’s designed to test the communications, power and control systems for the company’s Blue Ring multi-use space platform. The test flight is part of a prototyping effort for orbital logistics that’s supported by the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit.

Blue Origin has been working on the development of New Glenn for more than a decade — and mission controllers are likely to be monitoring the performance of the two-stage rocket at least as closely as they’ll be monitoring the payload.

“This is our first flight, and we’ve prepared rigorously for it,” said Jarrett Jones, senior vice president for New Glenn. “But no amount of ground testing or mission simulations are a replacement for flying this rocket. It’s time to fly. No matter what happens, we’ll learn, refine and apply that knowledge to our next launch.”

New Glenn stands more than 320 feet (98 meters) high and features a 7-meter (23-foot-wide) payload fairing, which Blue Origin says can provide twice the volume of a standard 5-meter fairing. (For what it’s worth, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 can accommodate a 5.2-meter fairing, while its Starship super-rocket has a 9-meter fairing.)

The rocket’s first stage is powered by seven of Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines, fueled with liquefied natural gas. The second stage makes use of two hydrogen-fueled BE-3U engines. Maximum thrust at liftoff is 3.8 million pounds, which is about half the thrust that was generated by the Saturn V moon rockets of the Apollo era.

After stage separation, New Glenn’s first-stage booster is designed to fly itself to a touchdown on a specially designed barge hundreds of miles out in the Atlantic — a barge that’s been christened Jacklyn as a tribute to Bezos’ mother. Blue Origin’s CEO, Dave Limp, has acknowledged that the rocket landing is an iffy proposition.

“We’re calling New Glenn’s first booster ‘So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance,’” Limp wrote on the X social-media site in September. “Why? No one has landed a reusable booster on the first try. Yet, we’re going for it, and humbly submit having good confidence in landing it.”

A successful mission would address one of the most common criticisms leveled against Bezos and Blue Origin — that they’ve been in business for more than 20 years and have spent billions of dollars without putting anything in orbit (although they’ve successfully launched and landed suborbital New Shepard rockets for nearly a decade).

Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which was founded a couple of years after Blue Origin, has been far more successful in the orbital launch business. But if New Glenn enters commercial service soon, that could provide much more competition for SpaceX and other launch providers.

Blue Origin says it has several New Glenn vehicles in production at its Florida factory, and has filled out a “full customer manifest” for launches in the months ahead. High-profile missions include satellite launches to low Earth orbit for Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband constellation and the launch of twin orbiters for NASA’s ESCAPADE mission to Mars.

And that’s just the start: This first launch, known as NG-1, will count toward certifying New Glenn for national security space launch contracts that could eventually be worth billions of dollars.

This is an updated version of a report that was first published Jan. 6.

Get ready for Amazon’s Project Kuiper to pick up the pace in the megaconstellation space race.

So far, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite megaconstellation has dominated the market for broadband connectivity from low Earth orbit. In the nearly 10 years since SpaceX founder Elon Musk unveiled the project in Seattle, the Starlink network has attracted more than 5 million subscribers and more than $2 billion in U.S. government contracts (including work on the Starshield national security network).

But the year ahead promises to bring heightened competition: Like Starlink, Project Kuiper aims to offer high-speed internet access from the skies for hundreds of millions of people around the world who are currently underserved.

Following up on last year’s successful test of two prototype satellites, Amazon plans to begin launching operational Kuiper satellites in early 2025, with service due to begin by the end of the year. Pricing details haven’t yet been announced, but Amazon says “affordability is a key principle of Project Kuiper.”

Amazon’s satellites are being built at facilities in Kirkland and Redmond, Wash., with additional support facilities located in Everett, Wash., and at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Under the terms of Amazon’s license from the Federal Communications Commission, at least half of Project Kuiper’s initial set of 3,232 satellites will have to go into orbit by mid-2026 — which will require an ambitious launch campaign. Next year’s milestone launch is due to use United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket, but Amazon has also reserved rides on ULA’s Vulcan, Blue Origin’s New Glenn, Arianespace’s Ariane 6 and even SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

Even as Amazon is gearing up on the technical side, it’s firming up its business plans as well. Project Kuiper’s strategic partners include Verizon in the U.S. and other telecom providers in South America, Japan, Europe and Africa. This month, officials in Taiwan said they were talking with Amazon about collaborating on Kuiper — a deal that could make the island’s communication systems more resilient in the face of potential threats from mainland China.

In his most recent letter to shareholders, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that Kuiper will represent a “very large revenue opportunity” once it’s in service. Among the biggest opportunities are potential synergies with Amazon Web Services, which could use Kuiper to boost global connectivity through the cloud.

Meanwhile, SpaceX isn’t standing still: Microsoft has incorporated Starlink connectivity into its Azure cloud computing ecosystem. In July, the Redmond-based software giant’s M12 venture fund led a $40 million funding round for Armada, a startup that’s building mobile data centers optimized for Starlink services.

In early 2025, Bellevue, Wash.-based T-Mobile is due to begin beta testing for direct-to-cell services that make use of SpaceX’s next-generation Starlink satellites. Mike Katz, T-Mobile’s president of marketing, strategy and products, said in a news release that T-Mobile Starlink will make “the phone in your pocket work in areas of the U.S. that have never, and probably never will, have ground-based coverage.”

The maturation of the megaconstellation market isn’t the only space development to look forward to in the year to come. Here’s a look back at the top space stories of 2024, and a look ahead to space stories that are likely to pop up in 2025:

2024’s top space stories

• Blue Origin gets back to flying crews: Jeff Bezos’ space venture resumed sending customers on suborbital space trips in May after a 21-month gap.
• Boeing’s Starliner falls short in first crewed flight test: Glitches experienced during two astronauts’ flight to International Space Station in June forced NASA to send the Starliner space taxi back down to Earth uncrewed. The two Starliner crew members are still waiting for a ride back on a SpaceX Dragon. Meanwhile, Boeing’s continuing problems led to an executive overhaul.
• SpaceX catches a falling Starship: SpaceX made significant progress in the flight test program for its Starship / Super Heavy launch system — including a flight in October that featured a spectacular “catch” of the Super Heavy booster as it descended back to its launch pad.
• Good news, bad news for moon missions: A series of robotic landers made it to the moon — including Japan’s SLIM spacecraft and Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus probe. But Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander had to miss out due to a problem with its propulsion system. Also, NASA announced that the first crewed lunar landing in more than half a century would have to be postponed until mid-2027 at the earliest.
• A solar eclipse and other wonders in the sky: Weather made seeing April’s total solar eclipse a tricky proposition, but persistence paid off. The following month brought an auroral display that was widely seen, and October’s highlight was an appearance by Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS.

Space trends to watch in 2025

• First flight for Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket: In the wake of a successful hotfire test, Jeff Bezos’ space venture is expected to launch its first orbital payload early in the new year.
• A big year for Stoke Space and its Nova rocket: The Tukwila, Wash.-based startup conducted its own crucial hotfire test this month and is aiming to launch its first Nova rocket from Florida by the end of 2025.
• Grand opening for a grand observatory: Science operations will begin at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile next year, with “First Light” currently scheduled for June. The billion-dollar project has received financial support from Microsoft pioneer Charles Simonyi and technical guidance from astronomers at the University of Washington.
• Total lunar eclipse and other wonders: Millions of Americans will be able to watch the moon go dim on the night of March 13-14. A different sort of spectacle is due to unfold in late January and early February, when as many as six planets (and maybe even seven) will be visible in the night sky.
• The Trump effect on the final frontier: It seems likely that there’ll be changes in space policy once Donald Trump returns to the White House, especially considering that Elon Musk is a key adviser. Trump’s choice for NASA administrator, tech billionaire Jared Isaacman, has already set new precedents as the leader of the Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn space missions. What might Isaacman, Musk and Trump come up with in 2025? Stay tuned…

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says it’s put its orbital-class New Glenn rocket through its last major test in preparation for its first-ever launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

“Next stop launch,” Bezos said in a posting to the X social-media platform.

Blue Origin’s CEO, Dave Limp, went into a bit more detail: “All we have left to do is mate our encapsulated payload … and then LAUNCH!” he wrote.

Today’s integrated vehicle hotfire test took place just hours after the Federal Aviation Administration issued a five-year license for New Glenn launches and landings. The first launch hasn’t yet been officially scheduled but could take place in early January. “We are really close, folks,” Limp said in an earlier X update.

New Glenn, which is named after the late astronaut and senator John Glenn, has been in the works for more than a decade. The first launch will send up Blue Origin’s Blue Ring Pathfinder, a demonstrator spacecraft that will test the communications, power and control systems for the company’s Blue Ring space mobility platform.

During today’s pre-launch rehearsal, all seven of New Glenn’s first-stage BE-4 engines fired simultaneously for 24 seconds while the booster was held down on the pad. The engines were brought up to 100% thrust for 13 of those seconds.

At their maximum, New Glenn’s first-stage engines are designed to generate 3.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, which is about half the thrust that was produced by the Saturn V rocket of the Apollo era. Limp wrote that the seven BE-4 engines “produce enough horsepower to propel two Nimitz-class aircraft carriers at full tilt.”

Jarrett Jones, Blue Origin’s senior vice president for New Glenn, said today’s hotfire test was “a monumental milestone and a glimpse of what’s just around the corner for New Glenn’s first launch.”

“Today’s success proves that our rigorous approach to testing — combined with our incredible tooling and design engineering — is working as intended,” Jones said in a news release.

Blue Origin says it has several New Glenn vehicles in production at its Florida factory, and has filled out a “full customer manifest” for launches in the months ahead. High-profile missions include satellite launches to low Earth orbit for Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband constellation and the launch of twin orbiters for NASA’s ESCAPADE mission to Mars.

New Glenn’s first launch will be part of the certification process for the U.S. Space Force’s National Security Space Launch program. The first-stage booster is designed to fly itself back to a barge at sea for recovery, and Limp has said that a recovery attempt would be part of the plan for the first launch.

“We’re calling New Glenn’s first booster ‘So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance,’” he wrote on X in September. “Why? No one has landed a reusable booster on the first try. Yet, we’re going for it, and humbly submit having good confidence in landing it.”

Stoke Space successfully hotfired its first-stage rocket engine on a new vertical test stand at the company’s Moses Lake, Wash., facility on Wednesday in what was called “a very big deal” for the 4-year-old startup.

The company released dramatic photographs of the test in action, posting on X that it was an “incredible team effort.”

Kent, Wash.-based Stoke Space has been on a quest to build a new breed of fully reusable rockets and space vehicles that it says will be designed to operate with “aircraft-like frequency.”

The startup was founded in 2019 by CEO Andy Lapsa, a veteran of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture, and Tom Feldman, who worked at Blue Origin after interning at SpaceX.

Stoke Space called the test significant for several reasons. It’s the first hotfire of the company’s Block 2 (flight layout) stage 1 engine, and this engine architecture — called full-flow staged combustion (FFSC) — is considered particularly challenging. Only two entities in the world — Stoke and SpaceX — have successfully developed FFSC engines.

“It’s a very big deal to be able to test this full-flow staged combustion engine in its flight (vertical) orientation,” Feldman, Stoke’s CTO, said in a statement to GeekWire. “This test represents the culmination of some very hard work across many different teams at Stoke, and will serve as the basis for much learning to come.”

Stoke’s stage 1 engine is a liquified natural gas/liquid oxygen engine capable of producing 100,000 pounds of thrust. The duration of the test was not revealed.

It was the first time Stoke has tested on its new vertical test stand in Moses Lake. The company’s testing philosophy is that you must “test like you fly,” and it believes vertical testing is key to engine development.

“Can’t test an engine without a test stand, and this one’s a beauty,” Lapsa said on X after Wednesday’s test. “Gorgeous clean burn using all the flows!”

Lapsa is being honored Thursday night at the GeekWire Gala in Seattle as one of this year’s five “Uncommon Thinkers,” in recognition of inventors, scientists, technologists and entrepreneurs transforming industries and driving positive change in the world.

In 2023, the Stoke raised $100 million and showcased a successful up-and-down test of its “Hopper” developmental rocket vehicle.

Bellevue, Wash.-based Lumen Orbit, a startup founded earlier this year, raised $11 million to fuel plans to put data centers in space that power technology and AI services back down on Earth.

The seed funding, which comes shortly after a $2.4 million pre-seed investment round announced in March, reflects high investor interest in Lumen. TechCrunch reported that the company heard from more than 200 venture capitalists, and raised its latest round at a $40 million valuation.

NFX led the round, which included participation from Seattle-area venture firm FUSE, as well as Soma Capital and scout funds from Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia.

Lumen graduated from Y Combinator’s summer cohort this year and plans to launch a full-scale prototype in 2025.

Lumen CEO and co-founder Philip Johnston is a former associate at McKinsey & Co. who also co-founded an e-commerce venture called Opontia.

Lumen’s other co-founders are chief technology officer Ezra Feilden, whose resume includes engineering experience at Oxford Space Systems and Airbus Defense and Space; and chief engineer Adi Oltean, who worked as a principal software engineer at SpaceX’s Starlink facility in Redmond, Wash.

The company is riding tailwinds from the AI boom, which is driving up demand for data center capacity.

“We started Lumen with the mission of launching a constellation of orbital data centers for in-space edge processing,” Oltean explained to GeekWire earlier this year. “Essentially, other satellites will send our constellation the raw data they collect. Using our on-board GPUs, we will run AI models of their choosing to extract insights, which we will then downlink for them. This will save bandwidth downlinking large amounts of raw data and associated cost and latency.”

Other companies aiming to put data centers in orbit include ASCEND, a project funded by the European Union that has been looking into the feasibility of creating a fleet of space-based data centers, with Thales Alenia Space taking a leading role. And Texas-based Axiom Space says it’s partnering with Kepler Space and Skyloom to set up an orbital data center on Axiom’s first space module, which is due for launch in the 2026-2027 time frame.

Seattle-based Orbite says that it’s completed a $4 million funding round and sealed a strategic deal with Accor, one of the world’s leading hospitality companies, to advance its plans for offering space-oriented experiences on Earth.

Those experiences include luxury travel packages to exotic destinations such as Paris, the Caribbean island of Curaçao and Antarctica. Orbite (which takes its name from the French word for “orbit,” pronounced or-beet) is also aiming to build a campus on Florida’s Space Coast that would serve as a center for spaceflight training.

All of the experiences have a space angle to them: For example, the Paris package focuses on space foods and life in space habitats. One of the Curaçao offerings features submersible trips as an analog for spaceflight. And the Antarctica trip lets visitors feel as if they’re on a “glamping” trip on Mars.

“We don’t want to say this is space camp for adults,” Orbite CEO Jason Andrews told GeekWire. “This isn’t made-up entertainment. This is an actual luxury vacation where you get to try elements of astronaut training — real astronaut training — so there’s a high level of authenticity to it.”

Prices start at $19,500 for a three-day session in Paris, and range up to a minimum cost of $215,000 for the eight-day Antarctica trip. “It’s in line for a luxury vacation for our target clientele, but it’s unique in that you learn a lot about space, elements of astronaut training and what it’s like to live in space,” said Andrews, who previously served as the CEO of Spaceflight Industries.

The target clientele includes some participants who may be considering the idea of traveling to the final frontier with, say, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture, or Virgin Galactic, or SpaceX. Others may merely be interested in an earthbound vacation that has a space angle.

In the years since its founding in 2019, Orbite has conducted several spaceflight orientation sessions for small groups of clients — sessions that included virtual-reality simulations as well as zero-G and high-G airplane flights. The expanded schedule is due to kick off next spring, Andrews said.

Orbite’s partnership with Accor is a key part of the business plan. “We are developing a luxury space experience / astronaut training facility, and so it makes sense to have a strategic partner — a hospitality partner who can help bring some of the processes as well as the global reach to drive growth and demand for that facility,” Andrews said.

Agnes Roquefort, head of development for Accor Luxury & Lifestyle, said Accor “has always been at the forefront of creating transformative hospitality experiences.”

“We are excited to partner with Orbite to pioneer a new frontier in space hospitality, offering our customers a unique opportunity to explore space while fostering a deeper connection to the well-being of Earth,” Roquefort said in a news release.

Andrews said Accor participated in the $4 million Series A funding round, but he declined to identify other investors. “We describe our investors as family offices, and wealthy and high-net-worth individuals,” he said. Some of the funding has come from Andrews himself and from his co-founder, Nicolas Gaume, who serves as Orbite’s executive chairman.

Gaume said “we really have invested into having the best in terms of training and experience, and we surely also surround ourselves with amazing advisers.” Orbite’s advisers include retired NASA astronaut Charlie Precourt and former NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver.

The training sessions will be presented by in-house experts as well as astronauts and other experts on facets of spaceflight, ranging from medicine to mealtimes. One of Orbite’s recent private gatherings to preview the new “Experience Train Fly Program” included a presentation on space food by Jérôme Lacressonnière, who’s the director of famed French chef Alain Ducasse’s consultant firm, Gaume said. Ducasse Conseil has been charged with coming up with space menus for the European Space Agency and CNES, France’s space studies center.

It’s taken longer than Orbite’s founders expected to ramp up operations. The current projection is that the gateway campus in the Cape Canaveral area will be open for business in 2027

Andrews said rising interest rates have complicated the financing plan for building the campus. “Given the interest rate environment, it’s been challenging in the United States for all development activity,” he said. “It’s a macro problem, it’s not an Orbite problem, but we’re still making progress on that.”

The other factor has to do with SpaceX’s Starship super-rocket, which is expected to widen the market for spaceflight — including the space tourism market. The test program for Starship is taking longer than originally projected, which means Orbite is still waiting for the demand to kick into higher gear.

“Nicolas and I started Orbite because of a long-term vision for what this new space economy is going to be, and we also really believed that that vision wasn’t going to be achieved until Starship was operational,” Andrews said. “Maybe we were a little early in 2019 when we started the company, but at the same time, I think we’re super excited that we are where we are from an industry perspective.”

Last month, SpaceX put its Starship launch system through its sixth flight test, and the tempo of the tests could soon accelerate. At a recent investment conference, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said she “would not be surprised if we fly 400 Starship launches in the next four years.”

That’s music to the ears of Andrews and Gaume.

“I think now is the time,” Andrews said. “I think this investment marks recognition by some pioneering investors that this is going to be big, and that it’s the right time and place to get involved.”

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture sent six more people to the edge of space today — including the first husband-and-wife pair to make two trips together to the final frontier, and a science communicator who describes herself as “the Space Gal.”

The six spacefliers were launched from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas at 9:30 a.m. CT (7:30 a.m. PT) aboard the company’s New Shepard suborbital rocket ship. They raised Blue Origin’s tally of spacefliers to 47 — a number that now accounts for roughly 6% of all the humans who have flown into space,

During the 10-minute flight, New Shepard’s crew capsule rose just beyond 347,000 feet (105.8 kilometers, or 65.7 miles), which is just above the 100-kilometer Karman Line that serves as the internationally accepted boundary of space.

While the capsule was floating to a parachute-assisted landing amid the Texas scrublands, New Shepard’s booster flew itself back autonomously to a landing pad near the launch pad.

The New Shepard program is nearly a decade old, and began flying crew members (including Bezos himself) in 2021. This was the program’s 28th flight and the ninth crewed flight. The crew for the NS-28 mission included:

• Marc and Sharon Hagle, who previously flew together on New Shepard in 2022. That flight made them the first married couple to launch on a commercial space vehicle. (NASA astronauts Jan Davis and Mark Lee were the first husband and wife to go into space simultaneously, but that’s another story.) Today’s flight qualified the Hagles as the first married couple to take two spaceflights together. Marc is a commercial property developer, while Sharon is the founder of an educational nonprofit group called SpaceKids Global.
• Emily Calandrelli, a science communicator who’s the host of “Emily’s Wonder Lab” on Netflix, “Xploration Outer Space” on Fox TV stations and “Emily’s Science Lab” on YouTube. Calandrelli was trained as an engineer at MIT and is the author of nine children’s books about space and science. Today’s trip made her the 100th woman to fly to space.
• Austin Litteral, a risk management professional in the financial services industry. Litteral won his ticket to ride in a “Whatnot to the Moon” giveaway, sponsored by the Whatnot livestream shopping platform.
• J.D. Russell, the founder of InfoHOA, a company specializing in tech-based community management solutions. Russell is also the founder of the Victoria Russell Foundation, which is dedicated to supporting children’s education and assistance to the families of first responders.
• Hank Wolfond, chairman and CEO of Bayshore Capital in Toronto. Wolfond moonlights as a professional pilot on charter, medevac and organ retrieval flights. He also works with groups including the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee and the Toronto General and Western Hospital Foundation.

After the flight, Marc Hagle emerged from the capsule holding a flag emblazoned with the number “2,” referring to the Hagles’ status as two-time spacefliers. One other Blue Origin client, Florida investor Evan Dick, is also a two-timer.

Calandrelli was enthusiastic about the feeling she had when she saw Earth’s expanse beneath the black sky of space. “I kept saying, ‘That’s our planet. That’s our planet,'” she said. “It was the same feeling I had when my kids were born. I was like, ‘That’s my baby.'”

“It’s always moving to witness an astronaut crew return from space changed by their experience on New Shepard,” Phil Joyce, Blue Origin’s senior vice president for New Shepard, said in a post-mission statement. “This mission amplifies the importance of STEAM [science, technology, engineering, art and math] and inspiring the next generation, and we welcomed back two returning astronauts.”

Blue Origin doesn’t publicize the price for a New Shepard ride, but based on the Hagles’ experience, it just might offer a discount for return customers.

Standing beside his wife, Wolfond said he couldn’t wait to fly again. “She’s coming with me next time,” he said. “We’re going to do the Hagle thing.”

AST SpaceMobile plans to use Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket to launch some of the satellites for its space-based cellular broadband network in 2025 and 2026.

New Glenn has been under development at Jeff Bezos’ privately held space venture for more than a decade. Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin says the orbital-class rocket’s first launch is “on track” to take place this year at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Texas-based AST SpaceMobile is one of several satellite companies that have struck deals for New Glenn launches in advance of the rocket’s first mission.

“New Glenn’s performance and unprecedented capacity within its seven-meter fairing enables us to deploy more of our Block 2 BlueBird satellites in orbit, helping provide continuous cellular broadband service coverage across some of the most in-demand cellular markets globally,” Abel Avellan, AST SpaceMobile’s founder, chairman and CEO, said in a news release. 

“It’s an honor to support AST SpaceMobile’s deployment of their next-generation BlueBird satellites, which will expand connectivity across the globe and positively impact many lives,” Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said. “New Glenn is purpose-built for these kinds of innovative and ambitious missions.”

AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird network is designed to operate directly with everyday smartphones and allow seamless switching between terrestrial cell towers and satellite signals, depending on location and coverage needs. The company’s strategic investors include AT&T, Verizon, Google and Vodafone, and it’s said to have agreements with more than 45 mobile network operators globally.

The Block 2 BlueBirds have communications arrays that cover as much as 2,400 square feet when they’re unfolded, which would make them the largest commercial satellites ever deployed in low Earth orbit.

AST SpaceMobile plans to use New Glenn as well as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and India’s GSLV rocket to deploy up to 60 satellites in the 2025-2026 time frame. Thanks to New Glenn’s super-sized fairing, each Blue Origin launch could send as many as eight Block 2 BlueBirds to low Earth orbit.

“We have now contractually secured orbital launch capacity during 2025 and 2026 to enable continuous cellular broadband service coverage of the AST SpaceMobile network,” the company’s president, Scott Wisniewski, said in a news release. He said AST Space Mobile was “well-positioned” to reach its goal of providing service to hundreds of millions of users around the world, and to the U.S. government.

AST SpaceMobile faces competition in the low-Earth-orbit satellite telecom market from SpaceX’s Starlink network (which has a cellular deal with T-Mobile) and Eutelsat’s OneWeb network. Next year, Amazon’s Project Kuiper network is due to join the fray. For what it’s worth, Project Kuiper also has reserved New Glenn rockets, and SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets have been tasked with sending up satellites for Starlink, Kuiper and OneWeb.

The collaboration is part of NASA’s Transform to Open Science Initiative, which aims to make more than 100 petabytes of satellite imagery and other Earth science data more readily available to scientists, educators, policymakers and the general public.

“The vision behind this collaboration was to leverage AI and cloud technologies to bring Earth’s insights to communities that have been underserved, where access to data can lead to tangible improvements,” Minh Nguyen, Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft, said today in a blog posting about the project. “By enabling users to interact with the data through simple, plain language queries, we’re helping to democratize access to spaceborne information.”

Tyler Bryson, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for U.S. health and public sector industries, said Earth Copilot lets users interact with NASA’s data repository conversationally.

Bryson noted that the sheer scale and complexity of the information gathered for NASA’s Earth Science Data Systems Program can sometimes make finding the right information a daunting task. Earth Copilot doesn’t require users to navigate highly technical interfaces or master the intricacies of geospatial analysis.

“Instead, they can simply ask questions such as ‘What was the impact of Hurricane Ian in Sanibel Island?’ or ‘How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect air quality in the U.S.?'” Bryson said. “AI will then retrieve relevant datasets, making the process seamless and intuitive.”

The project leverages Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and the customizable capabilities of Azure OpenAI Service.

“Azure’s robust suite of services, including machine learning, data analytics and scalable cloud infrastructure, powers this AI prototype,” said Juan Carlos López, a former NASA engineer who is now an Azure Specialist at Microsoft. “We’ve designed the system to handle complex queries and large datasets efficiently, ensuring that users can quickly find the information they need without getting bogged down by technical complexities. Our goal was to create a seamless, scalable solution that could evolve as NASA’s data, tools and applications grow.”

Earth Copilot is currently being tested by NASA researchers to explore its capabilities. After the platform is evaluated and fine-tuned, the NASA IMPACT team will look into making it part of its Visualization, Exploration and Data Analysis Project — also known as VEDA.

Tukwila, Wash.-based Starfish Space today announced that it has raised $29 million to support the development of its first three Otter orbital servicing vehicles for missions serving the U.S. Space Force, NASA and Intelsat.

The investment round was led by Shield Capital, a San Francisco venture capital firm specializing in advanced technologies in fields ranging from space to cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. Other major participants in the round include new investors such as Point 72 Ventures, Booz Allen Ventures, Aero X Ventures, Trousdale Ventures and TRAC VC, plus existing investors such as Munich Re Ventures, Toyota Ventures, NFX and Industrious Ventures.

Initial word of the funding round came in September, in a regulatory filing and a GeekWire report. At the time, Starfish declined to comment on the investment or the investors. Today, Starfish co-founder Austin Link hailed the fresh infusion of capital in a news release.

“This new round of funding is a pivotal moment in the journey of Starfish Space, as it will allow us to launch the first Otter satellites to orbit,” Link said. “These first Otters will change what is possible when it comes to operating satellites in space. We are excited to partner with an outstanding group of investors to make these missions happen, and proud of the growing support we’ve received from existing investors as part of this round.”

Starfish’s Otter spacecraft is designed to rendezvous with satellites in orbit to inspect them and link up with them, either for servicing or for safe disposal. The system makes use of several innovative technologies, including Starfish’s Cetacean and Cephalopod navigation and docking software systems and the Nautilus orbital capture mechanism.

Link and Starfish’s other co-founder, Trevor Bennett, founded the company in 2019 after working at Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture. Since then, Starfish has built up its workforce to 70 employees and has raised a total of $50 million in venture capital funding, including the current investment round.

Last year, Starfish launched a scaled-down prototype known as Otter Pup for orbital testing. Although the test encountered a series of challenges, the results encouraged the Starfish team as well as investors.

“On-orbit satellite servicing is a critical evolution to unlock the next level of value for defense and commercial space,” Letitia “Tish” Long, newly appointed Starfish Board member and senior adviser at Shield Capital, said in today’s news release. “Austin, Trevor and the whole Starfish team have proven their ability to execute complex missions on orbit, and we are excited to be partnering with them as they deliver Otter for critical customer applications.”

Starfish has a $37.5 million contract with the U.S. Space Force to execute a first-of-its-kind mission that involves having the full-scale Otter dock with and maneuver national security assets in geostationary Earth orbit.

The company has also signed a contract with Intelsat to provide on-orbit life extension services to a geostationary satellite beginning in 2026, and has been put in charge of a $15 million NASA mission aimed at inspecting multiple U.S.-owned defunct satellites in orbit, beginning in 2027.

Those three missions will make use of the Otter spacecraft supported by the new funding round. Last month, Starfish won a study contract from the National Reconnaissance Office to look into further applications for Otter.

Tukwila, Wash.-based Starfish Space and two other companies have won contracts from the National Reconnaissance Office, America’s spy satellite agency, to evaluate advanced technologies for space operations.

Starfish’s work for the NRO will focus on potential applications for the startup’s Otter spacecraft, which is designed to inspect and hook up with other satellites in orbit, either for servicing or for safe disposal.

“This collaboration offers a valuable opportunity to assess how Otter can enhance our national space-based intelligence infrastructure,” Starfish Space said today in a posting to X / Twitter.

The contracts were awarded under terms laid out by the NRO’s Office of Space Launch for a program known as Broad Agency Announcements for Agile Launch Innovation and Strategic Technology Advancement, or BALISTA. Eric Zarybnisky, the director of the Office of Space Launch, said in a statement that the BALISTA effort will help NRO “advance emerging technologies across launch, on-orbit support, and command and control.”

The two other BALISTA contracts went to Texas-based Cognitive Space, which is developing automated tools for managing satellite operations with the aid of artificial intelligence; and California-based Impulse Space, which is working on in-space transportation services for satellites. Impulse Space was founded by rocket engineer Tom Mueller, who was the first employee hired at SpaceX. The value of the contracts was not made public.

Starfish was founded in 2019 by Trevor Bennett and Austin Link, both of whom are alumni of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture. The company tested a scaled-down prototype for Otter, known as Otter Pup, during an orbital demonstration mission that was launched last year and went on for months under trying circumstances.

This year, Starfish struck a $37.5 million deal with the U.S. Space Force to execute a first-of-its-kind mission that involves having the full-scale Otter dock with and maneuver national security assets in geostationary Earth orbit.

Starfish has also signed a contract with Intelsat to provide on-orbit life extension services to a geostationary satellite beginning in 2026, and has been put in charge of a $15 million NASA mission aimed at inspecting multiple U.S.-owned defunct satellites in orbit, beginning in 2027.

Is Boeing thinking about unloading some of its space projects? Is Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture a potential buyer? And in light of former President Donald Trump’s increasingly close relationship with SpaceX founder Elon Musk, how are Bezos and Blue Origin reaching out to the GOP candidate?

Such speculation is fueled by several reports about space-related (and Bezos-related) developments over just the past couple of days. Here’s a quick rundown:

Boeing considers trimming back space programs: Citing unidentified sources, The Wall Street Journal reports that Boeing is exploring the idea of handing off some of its roles in space programs for NASA — including its unprofitable Starliner space taxi development program.

The Journal says such discussions are still at an early stage and may not result in a deal. But the strategy is in line with recently appointed CEO Kelly Ortberg’s plan to streamline Boeing’s business lines in light of its financial crisis. This week the company announced a quarterly loss of $6 billion, and union workers voted to continue a costly strike affecting Boeing’s airplane factories.

Starliner has been costly as well, due to $1.85 billion in overruns that haven’t been covered by Boeing’s fixed-price contract with NASA. This summer’s first crewed Starliner mission to the International Space Station was marred by thruster issues that resulted in the capsule being sent back down to Earth uncrewed. The two astronauts who rode Starliner to the ISS will have to stay in orbit until a SpaceX Dragon brings them down next year.

Boeing also has served as the prime contractor for the space station — but with ISS operations scheduled to wind down in the 2030 time frame, the company is exploring an arrangement to transfer that support role to a different company, the Journal reports. United Launch Alliance, Boeing’s joint venture with Lockheed Martin, has also long been rumored to be up for sale.

The Journal says some of its sources expect Boeing to hang onto its satellite business, as well as its role as a major contractor for NASA’s heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket.

Could Blue Origin step in? According to the Journal’s sources, Boeing has held discussions with Blue Origin about taking over some of the NASA programs. Such discussions reportedly took place before Ortberg became Boeing’s CEO.

Blue Origin has a couple of potential lines of business that could be a good match for what Boeing’s currently doing in space. Last year, for example, the company began a collaboration with NASA to explore developing new capabilities for crew transportation to and from low Earth orbit. Having a crew capsule would complement the capabilities of Blue Origin’s orbital-class New Glenn rocket, which is currently being prepared for its first launch.

Boeing is already one of the partners backing Orbital Reef, a commercial space station project led by Blue Origin. The plan calls for Boeing’s Starliner capsule and Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser space plane to transport crew and cargo to and from Orbital Reef. Would Blue Origin take over the Starliner program, or develop its own crew vehicle to take over Starliner’s role? If NASA puts more money into Orbital Reef, might ISS operations be part of the deal?

Any of those strategies would be a big step for Bezos’ space venture, which already has its hands full with New Glenn, Orbital Reef, the New Shepard suborbital space program and the Blue Moon lunar lander that’s being built for NASA’s use. But as Boeing’s executives consider how it might pare down its unprofitable lines of business, it’s worth watching what Blue Origin is doing as well.

We’ve reached out to Boeing and Blue Origin, and will update this report with anything we can pass along.

Blue Origin and Jeff Bezos attract notice on the political scene: The Washington Post and its owner, Jeff Bezos, made news on Friday when the newspaper announced that it would not make an endorsement in the presidential contest between Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump. Reports soon emerged that the Post’s staff had prepared an editorial endorsing Harris, but that Bezos spiked it.

Also on Friday, Trump made a campaign stop in Austin, Texas — and stopped along the way in an airport hangar for a quick chat with Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp and Megan Mitchell, the company’s vice president for government relations.

There haven’t been any details about the context for the meet-and-greet or about what was said. But some observers linked up the two developments to suggest that Bezos and the executives at his ventures were making efforts to smooth relations with Trump. Back in 2015, the two men stirred up something of a flame war on Twitter, now known as X. Since then, Bezos has brought down the temperature, going so far as to praise Trump on X for his “tremendous grace and courage” after July’s assassination attempt.

Now X is owned by Musk — who also founded SpaceX, the dominant player in the space industry. Musk is one of Bezos’ longtime business rivals. He’s also one of Trump’s biggest and most vocal backers. If Trump wins, Musk has agreed to support his efforts to reduce federal spending — perhaps as the leader of a “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE.

Considering the Bezos-Musk rivalry, it might make political sense for Blue Origin to have its own points of contact with Trump, just in case. It would be tricky to untangle the web of connections involving Trump, Musk and SpaceX, Blue Origin and Bezos. Nevertheless, we’ve reached out to the Trump campaign and to Blue Origin about this, and we’ll pass along anything we can report.

Update for 7 p.m. PT Oct. 28: In an opinion piece published by The Washington Post, Bezos defended his decision to pass up making an endorsement in the presidential race — and referred to Trump’s meeting with Blue Origin executives:

“Dave Limp, the chief executive of one of my companies, Blue Origin, met with former president Donald Trump on the day of our announcement. I sighed when I found out, because I knew it would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision. But the fact is, I didn’t know about the meeting beforehand. Even Limp didn’t know about it in advance; the meeting was scheduled quickly that morning. There is no connection between it and our decision on presidential endorsements, and any suggestion otherwise is false.”

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture successfully sent a brand-new New Shepard rocket ship on an uncrewed shakedown cruise today, with the aim of increasing the company’s capacity to take people on suborbital space trips.

The capsule, dubbed RSS Karman Line, carried payloads instead of people when it lifted off from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas at 10:27 a.m. CT (8:27 a.m. PT). But if all the data collected during the 10-minute certification flight checks out, it won’t be long before crews climb aboard for similar flights.

“Hopefully very soon we’ll see astronauts on board this vehicle,” launch commentator Joel Eby said after the capsule’s touchdown. “I want to say ‘welcome to the fleet’ for this brand-new vehicle.”

New Shepard spacecraft have now flown 27 times since 2015, with this mission designated NS-27. Eight of those missions have carried a total of 43 crew members in a human-rated capsule called RSS First Step. (RSS stands for “reusable spaceship.”) RSS Karman Line, which is named after the internationally accepted 100-kilometer boundary of outer space, should open the way for Blue Origin to pick up the pace of crewed flights going forward.

Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin says Karman Line incorporates a set of technology upgrades to improve the vehicle’s performance and reusability, The spacecraft also sports a simplified livery that does away with the giant feather that was previously painted on the booster and capsule. Eby said the new color scheme will make it easier for the spaceship to be touched up between missions.

This was the third time that Karman Line and its booster were brought out to the launch pad. Two previous attempts had to be called off due to glitches that cropped up during the countdown.

A couple of delays marked today’s countdown, but once the booster’s hydrogen-fueled rocket engine lit up, the certification mission followed the playbook for suborbital space trips. Minutes after liftoff, the capsule separated from its booster and rose above 100 kilometers (62-miles) in altitude, making good on its name.

The booster flew itself back to an autonomous landing on a pad not far from its launch tower, while the capsule floated down on the end of parachutes for its own touchdown amid the scrubland surrounding the launch site.

Twelve payloads were packed aboard the rocket ship — five on the booster, and seven more inside the capsule. Those payloads included new navigation systems that Blue Origin has developed for New Shepard and its orbital-class New Glenn rocket; two different LIDAR sensors for Blue Origin’s lunar landing system; and ultra-wideband proximity operations sensors funded by NASA’s TechFlights program.

One of the payloads was a set of small-scale reproductions of the black monoliths from the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The monoliths were flown on behalf of Spacemanic for a special edition printed by Amaranthine Books.

The mission also carried tens of thousands of student-designed postcards on behalf of the Club for the Future, Blue Origin’s educational nonprofit organization. The “Postcards to Space” program collects the cards from kids, sends them to space and back on New Shepard flights, and then returns them to the kids as keepsakes.

BELLEVUE, Wash. — The biggest applause line at a Bellevue Chamber event focusing on the Seattle area’s space industry came when attention was paid to a down-to-earth topic: housing affordability for the industry’s workers.

“They don’t just come here to work,” U.S. Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., told the audience at today’s sold-out luncheon. “They come here to live.”

The space industry is definitely on the rise in the Seattle area — particularly in a cluster of suburbs extending from Bellevue to Redmond and Kirkland to the north, and to Kent and Tukwila in the south.

Mike Fong, who is the director of the Washington State Department of Commerce and served as the event’s moderator, said the state’s commercial space ventures account for $4.6 billion in economic activity and more than 13,000 jobs.

That figure has continued to grow in the two years since the economic impact report that Fong cited first came out. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is said to have about 11,000 employees spread across the country, with many of them working at the company’s HQ in Kent. Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellite network — which is ramping up facilities in Redmond, Kirkland and Everett — has built up its workforce to about 2,000 employees.

When you include the workers at SpaceX’s satellite factory in Redmond, Aerojet Rocketdyne in Redmond, LeoStella in Tukwila and a host of space startups, it all adds up to more pressure on the region’s housing market. That pressure is already sky-high. For example, the median selling price for a home in Bellevue is more than $1.5 million, based on figures from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

“Not everybody who works in these companies is going to be issued 200 grand a year in stock options,” Smith told the audience, which included business leaders as well as elected officials. “How are you going to afford a place to live? You’ve got to be better at building housing, building it affordably.”

The region’s communities and employers have been trying to address the affordability crisis, but Smith said more needs to be done.

“You cannot have the nightmare permitting process that you have, all the requirements that go into that, and be able to build more housing,” he said. “I know there are a lot of people who are strong advocates for spending more money on housing. I applaud that. I do. But if we don’t change the cost structure of what it costs to build that housing, there is not enough money.”

Smith also said the state needed to devote more attention to the education system, particularly in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math, known collectively as STEM. Kelly Maloney, co-founder of a public-private consortium called Space Northwest, expressed a similar sentiment.

“The workforce of the future are really the young individuals that we need to embrace and have programs for,” Maloney said. “There’s been a lot done, but there’s also a lot that still needs to be done, and a lot of it is for the underserved and the marginalized.”

It’s not all bad news. “One policy area that we are getting right is workforce development,” Smith said. “You see a lot of cooperation between businesses, unions, community / technical colleges and, increasingly, high schools.”

Brian Huseman, Amazon’s vice president for public policy and community engagement, pointed to Project Kuiper’s partnership with Lake Washington Institute of Technology in Kirkland. That partnership aims to create a certificate program for satellite technicians, some of whom are likely to end up working for Project Kuiper.

“We’re helping to train and create a new class of jobs,” Huseman said. “We’re incredibly excited about that.”

Looking ahead, Maloney suggested that Washington state’s space industry could adapt the playbook used by other sectors of the tech industry.

“One thing that I think would serve our state well would be a partnership with government on an incubator specific to the space industry, or tech and related industries,” she said. “It would be something that would enhance people at the startup innovative stage.”

There are already a few space-centric startup accelerators, including Starburst, Amazon Web Services’ AWS Space Accelerator and the Techstars Space Accelerator. A venture studio called Actuate Ventures is just starting to get off the ground with plans to create innovation hubs in Redmond and other space industry hotspots. Will there be more? Stay tuned.

Fong said today’s rising interest in commercial space ventures is just the latest manifestation of the region’s leadership in the tech industry.

“This is really building on a 60-year legacy, going back to Boeing’s work on the lunar rover during the Apollo missions,” he said. “In truth, the unique DNA of the Pacific Northwest is what fosters and enables us to have an enduring role in this emergent economic opportunity.”

Could microbes endure just beneath the surface of Mars, in layers of dusty ice exposed to just the right amount of sunlight? A newly published study suggests those might be among the most accessible places to search for signs of life on the Red Planet.

The study, published today in Nature Communications Earth & Environment, is based on models developed using impure ice from Greenland.

“We did not find any direct evidence for any microbes on Mars,” study lead author Aditya Khuller told GeekWire in an email. “We do find that the depths where the radiation (solar and UV) conditions are favorable for photosynthesis within dusty Martian ice intersect with the depths where dusty ice can melt on Mars.”

Khuller is a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who’s due to join the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory at the end of the month. The paper’s co-authors include one of Khuller’s mentors, UW professor emeritus Steve Warren, whom Khuller says is “the world’s expert in how radiation interacts with snow and ice.”

Modern-day Mars is a cold, dry world, bombarded with life-killing levels of ultraviolet radiation. But scientists say that the planet would have been far more hospitable to life in ancient times. They suggest there’s a chance that hardy organisms could still be hanging on deep down in subsurface havens.

How deep? And how much of a chance? Those are questions that Khuller, Warren and their colleagues sought to answer by modeling the composition of Mars’ ice.

“We used impure Greenland ice instead of typical terrestrial snow, because it is likely that the dusty ice on Mars has also become coarse-grained since it was deposited sometime over the last million years, during a series of Martian ice ages,” Khuller said. The research team also factored in the presumed composition of Mars’ red, iron-rich dust.

Their conclusion was that there could be a sweet spot in layers of Martian ice where the dust could filter out UV radiation, while letting enough sunlight through to thaw out a trickle of water and support photosynthesis. That probably wouldn’t happen at the Martian polar caps, but it could happen in warmer areas at mid-latitudes.

The ice would have to be exposed to the surface. Khuller said one of the likeliest places to look would be in “the dusty ice that can get exposed by the overlying dry material slumping down within some gullies” on Mars. Such gullies have been areas of interest for astrobiologists for decades.

So, how deep might the habitable zone go? That depends on how much dust is in the ice, the researchers say. If the dust content amounts to somewhere between 0.01% and 0.1%, the zone could range between 5 and 38 centimeters (2 to 15 inches) in depth. If the ice is cleaner than that, the zone would be more like 2.15 to 3.1 meters deep (7 to 10 feet deep).

NASA is working with its commercial and institutional partners — including Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture, based in Kent, Wash. — to develop a plan for bringing samples back from Mars for study on Earth. But there are currently no plans to target deposits of dusty ice.

“We do believe that the dusty ice exposed at the Martian mid-latitudes within gullies would be excellent targets for future missions to search for signs of life on Mars,” Khuller said. “We hope that our findings will encourage the development of future missions to these locations to search for any potential life on Mars.”

In addition to Khuller and Warren, the authors of the study published by Nature Communications Earth & Environment, “Potential for Photosynthesis on Mars Within Snow and Ice,” include Philip Christensen and Gary Clow.