Japanese space tech startup Letara expands beyond satellite thrusters with $16M

Japan is pouring billions of dollars into its burgeoning space industry and easing restrictions on defense exports, efforts designed to build a homegrown aerospace sector filled with domestic startups that have a global reach. Letara, a Sapporo-based startup developing hybrid propulsion systems for spacecraft, is looking to capitalize on that push. After focusing on hybrid…

Read More
Elon Musk repeatedly one-upped his execs on SpaceX’s first earnings call

Elon Musk repeatedly one-upped his execs on SpaceX’s first earnings call

Elon Musk spent SpaceX’s first earnings call making some out-of-this-world claims about the company’s business and future prospects, while his fellow executives kept trying to bring his ideas closer to Earth — providing a hint of what’s to come now that his rocket-launching, compute-leasing, satellite-based telecom is public. The conference call, held Tuesday, was the…

Read More
Nvidia is sending GPUs to the moon

Nvidia is sending GPUs to the moon

Nvidia’s effort to deploy its GPUs far and wide is aiming at a new target: the moon. Lunar Outpost, a startup building robotics for space infrastructure, announced on Thursday that its next moon rover will use Jetson chips to control its lidar system. When it does, it is likely to be the first GPU on…

Read More
Sam Altman’s space data center trash talk is what most experts already believe

Sam Altman’s space data center trash talk is what most experts already believe

Sam Altman and Elon Musk traded barbed social media posts over the weekend, drawing new attention to the gap between vision and reality for the space-compute business. Responding to Musk accusing him of being a scammer, Altman said, “homeboy you’re the one sellling [sic] public market investors on short-term space datacenters.” Setting aside “homeboy,” Altman…

Read More