Space, NASA News

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Hot new space experiments

Illustration: Natalie Peeples/Axios Several futuristic space experiments launched into orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket this afternoon, Alex Fitzpatrick reports. 🚀 Among the 130 payloads aboard the Transporter-18 "rideshare" mission: Google's MVP satellite, designed to test the concept of solar-powered data centers in space. (N.Y. Times gift link) Protostar, a satellite from startup Star Catcher meant to transmit energy to another satellite — to bear out the idea of an orbital power grid. (Go deeper.) Reason-1, a satellite from startup Cowboy Space designed to collect solar energy in space and beam it to Earth. 🔌 Cowboy Space founder and CEO Baiju Bhatt tells Axios that the idea is to provide power in places without an existing power grid — a kind of Starlink for energy — while also working toward orbital data centers. There are also potential military applications, Bhatt adds — powering high-endurance surveillance drones, for example. 🤔 Reality check: It's early days for all of these concepts, which have long existed on drawing boards and in sci-fi novels but have yet to be borne out. The big picture: It's a boom time for intriguing commercial efforts in Earth orbit, though SpaceX's plan to wind down its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket has left the space industry scrambling for launch alternatives. Go deeper.

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Extraterrestrial signal

Astronomers say they have directly detected the first-ever radio emission from a planet outside our solar system. It gives scientists a “completely new view” on exoplanets and their atmospheres.