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Scientists are exploring how yeast could help produce construction materials for future Mars settlements, offering an alternative to transporting heavy machinery and resources from Earth. The approach would use biological processes to convert available materials into usable building components on-site.
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have identified a widespread class of compact, reddish objects dating to the universe's first billion years, dubbed 'little red dots.' Researchers say these objects have puzzled the field since their discovery, and new analysis is now offering possible explanations for what they are.
Blue Origin, the space company founded by Jeff Bezos, has been funded with roughly $30 billion of his personal fortune, according to reporting on the company's finances. The company is reportedly aiming to sharply increase revenue in coming years as it scales up production and launches of its large rockets.
Google will launch a prototype satellite to test how its Tensor Processing Units perform in orbit, part of Project Suncatcher, a research effort first announced last year. The initiative explores whether satellites in low Earth orbit, which can access near-constant sunlight and generate far more solar power than on Earth, could eventually host machine learning infrastructure.
A preprint study by researchers at Harvard University and the University of Oregon reports the first clear detection of radio emissions from a planet outside our solar system. The signal, picked up by South Africa's MeerKAT radio telescope, comes from Beta Pictoris b, a young gas giant several times the mass of Jupiter orbiting a star 63 light-years away. The findings have not yet been peer-reviewed.
The BBC reported that the UK's armed forces are actively jamming satellites belonging to other nations as part of efforts to protect Britain's own space-based infrastructure. Health Secretary Wes Streeting, commenting on the reliance on satellite systems, noted that Britain depends on them for weather forecasts, energy supplies, financial transactions, sat-navs, mobile networks and deliveries.
Former NASA Administrator Bill Nelson criticizes China's space ambitions in his memoir 'Space Odyssey,' set for a January 2027 release by Harper Horizon. He recounts NASA's involvement in the 2023 Chinese spy balloon incident, framing it as a signal of an intensifying space race with China, which he says has higher stakes than the Cold War.
NASA launched Artemis 2, sending astronauts on a lunar flyby mission using the Orion spacecraft for its first crewed flight. The mission was designed to test Orion's life-support, navigation, and other systems with humans aboard after previous uncrewed testing.
China's CAS Space launched the Kinetica 1 Y18 rocket on September 20, carrying nine satellites including the Supercomputing-1 (S-AIDC-1), built by S-AIDC. The satellite combines a high-resolution optical payload with an onboard AI computer to process Earth-observation data in orbit rather than transmitting raw data to ground-based data centers, reportedly cutting processing times from hours to minutes.
Pedro Duque, who became Spain's first astronaut and later led the country's science ministry, has been named an honorary member of IEEE. He now serves as president and chairman of the board of Spanish satellite company HispaSat, and accepted the honor via recorded remarks at an April 24 ceremony in New York he could not attend in person.
Asteroid-mining startup AstroForge has built an in-house AI system called Solo, using a transformer model to autonomously operate spacecraft without relying on large ground control teams. The company plans to test this system on its first autonomous mission in 2027, launching aboard Stoke Space's debut rocket in a NASA-backed flight that will collect solar data.
Nvidia-backed space data center startup Starcloud says it will include Bitcoin mining ASICs on its Starcloud-2 satellite, set to launch later this year, according to CEO Philip Johnston. The company was originally founded to move AI data centers into orbit, leveraging constant solar power and space-based cooling, but is now adding crypto mining as a secondary use of that energy.