Putting AI in space may sound like a sci-fi nightmare, but Google is thinking about the idea with a research endeavor called Project Suncatcher. The idea is to put power-hungry data centers into orbit on solar-powered satellites, so they can be powered by unlimited, clean energy available 24 hours a day. That would mitigate the nastiest aspects of AI cloud computing, like the use of power plants that spew huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. <br /> Project Suncatcher is a literal moonshot of the type that Google used to do more often. The search giant wants to put its AI chips, called Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), into orbit aboard solar panel-equipped satellites. “In the future, space may be the best place to scale AI compute,” wrote Google senior director Travis Beals. & [...]
At the start of the month, Elon Musk announced that two of his companies — SpaceX and xAI — were merging, and would jointly launch a constellation of 1 million satellites to operate as orbital d [...]
It’s not every day that we get to see a glimpse of what a mysterious space plane is up to in orbit. This week, the US Space Force shared a picture it says was snapped last year by the X-37B, showing [...]
Blue Origin has successfully reused its first-stage New Glenn booster for the first time after it landed in a cloud of smoke and fire on a recovery ship. It marks the second flight and reuse of Never [...]
We got to share in a rare moment of collective awe this week as four astronauts blasted off toward the moon, beginning a 10-day journey that will take them farther from Earth than any humans have trav [...]
NASA's SPHEREx observatory is now in space for a two year year mission to create a 3D map of the entire celestial sky. The telescope left the ground on top of a Falcon 9 rocket from a launch pad [...]
When NASA crashed a spacecraft into the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos in 2022, it altered both Dimorphos' orbit around its parent asteroid, Didymos, and the two objects' orbit around the sun, a [...]