Google sent a prototype orbital compute satellite, built by Planet Labs, aboard a SpaceX rocket from California, marking the first time one of its Tensor Processing Units has flown in space. The test will check whether the chip can sustain a kilowatt of continuous power, manage heat, and run AI models in short bursts without failure. Google's Travis Beals, who leads the effort called Project Suncatcher, said a more advanced two-satellite demo with laser communication links is planned for next year.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-10-01
Google has disclosed Project Suncatcher, an effort to launch AI computing hardware into space, according to the report. Researchers involved acknowledge significant technical challenges but argue the long-term economics could eventually justify orbital data centers.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-10-01
NASA's Swift observatory, in orbit for over two decades, is losing altitude and expected to drop below 185 miles by early to mid-October, a point at which operations and science observations will likely stop. A robotic spacecraft built by contractor Katalyst Space Technologies, launched in July to boost Swift's orbit, instead began spinning uncontrollably and burned up reentering Earth's atmosphere. NASA has since reactivated Swift's Burst Alert Telescope and resumed automatic pointing at gamma ray bursts, actions it says have accelerated the satellite's orbital decay.
futurism.com
· 2026-10-01
Katalyst Space Technologies built and launched a satellite called Link under a $30 million, nine-month NASA contract to boost the Swift Observatory into a higher orbit before it decayed. Link launched July 3 but suffered a malfunction weeks later that sent it spinning out of control, and NASA confirmed in August the rescue attempt was off. Swift, launched in 2004, lacks its own propulsion and remains at the mercy of atmospheric drag.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-10-01
NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 mission is set to launch October 1 at 11:10AM ET from Cape Canaveral, carrying commander Jessica Watkins, pilot Luke Delaney, CSA astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov to the ISS. The crew will relieve Crew-12, who briefly sheltered in their capsule in June after an air leak was detected on the station, and NASA says the docking will be the fastest in US space station history at seven hours and 50 minutes.
engadget.com
· 2026-10-01
Star Catcher is developing a constellation of satellites designed to collect solar energy in orbit and transmit it to other spacecraft. The system aims to supply power directly to satellites rather than requiring each to rely solely on its own solar panels.
gizmodo.com
· 2026-09-30
Charter Space, based in El Segundo, California, has closed a $5 million seed round to expand its space insurance business. The company already serves more than 50 clients across the U.S. space and defense sector since launching its nationally licensed insurance brokerage in May. Crystal Venture Partners led the round, with participation from QED, Blank Ventures, Hustle Fund, and Gaingels.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-09-30
OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT Space, a new shared workspace that lets people and AI edit documents together without copying content between ChatGPT and separate apps. It centers on Pages, editable documents supporting text, images, charts, tables, files, and comments, with editing help from ChatGPT, Codex, or Dots agents. The feature, announced at OpenAI's DevDay alongside the GPT-6.1 Sol model, replaces Library and is rolling out to Pro, Business, and Enterprise users, with Slides and Sheets support planned later.
androidauthority.com
· 2026-09-30
A developer built PSSA, a non-transformer language model coded from scratch in Rust without any ML framework, using a recurrent state-space layer, an episodic memory bank, and weights that update while the model runs. Tested against a matched-parameter standard transformer on identical data, PSSA reached a training loss of 3.98 versus the transformer's 4.43 over 12.7 million tokens, and generated text about twelve times faster on the same CPU. On a held-out 198,939-token slice neither model trained on, PSSA also scored lower loss throughout every checkpoint.
github.com
· 2026-09-30
SpaceX has told NASA and private space station developers including Axiom Space, Voyager Space, and Vast Space that it intends to stop flying Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 missions to low-Earth orbit after supporting the International Space Station through 2030. The move threatens the crew transportation backbone for NASA's two-decade effort to build a commercial human spaceflight market in orbit.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-09-29
At its fourth DevDay, OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT Space, a shared workspace where teams collaborate with ChatGPT and each other alongside a new agentic feature called Dots. It also launched Pages, a document tool combining AI research and writing, plus a collaborative slides feature enabling real-time co-editing with ChatGPT and export to PowerPoint or Google formats. Space and Pages are live now for Pro, Business and Enterprise users, with slides and mobile access coming soon.
zdnet.com
· 2026-09-29
Turion Space, an Irvine, California startup founded in 2020, has unveiled a new brand identity to reflect its evolution from a space debris removal company into a broader space infrastructure business. The company now builds vehicles, software, and payloads that enable spacecraft to maneuver, gather data, and complete missions in orbit, and it is pursuing larger government contracts against established aerospace firms and newer space rivals.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-09-29
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