Author: starpathwp-production
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NASA Runs Google’s Gemma AI in Orbit, Letting a Satellite Analyze Its Own Images
The experiment, called NAVI-Orbital, was conducted aboard Loft Orbital’s YAM-9 satellite and achieved its first successful in-orbit demonstration on April 16, 2026. According to the researchers, it represents the first reported demonstration of a vision-language model performing autonomous multimodal inference entirely aboard an orbiting spacecraft. Rather than simply capturing images and transmitting them to Earth…
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New Horizons for the Smallsat Industry
Welcome to the annual Via Smallsat edition — where Via Satellite rebrands to focus on the smallsat industry. We are thrilled to present the third group of Rising Stars, a group of 25 exemplary young professionals, 35 and under. This year we received more than 150 nominations — a sign of just how much incredible…
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SpaceX eyes tower catch for next Starship after auspicious end to 13th flight
SpaceX was more than lucky Friday, sending its 13th full-scale Starship test flight halfway around the world from South Texas to an on-target, intact splashdown in a remote section of the Indian Ocean. Starship has made precise splashdowns before. This time, however, the ship gently tipped over and came to rest floating in a remote…
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Soyuz MS-28 Returns Expedition 74 After 241 Days
Did Expedition 74 Complete Its 8-Month ISS Mission Successfully? Soyuz MS-28 touched down southeast of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan at 5:27 a.m. CDT on July 26, 2026, closing out a 241-day Expedition 74 mission that sent NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev around Earth 3,856 times. The crew departed the International…
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Wildfire forces evacuation of NASA’s Deep Space Network complex in Spain
A fast-moving wildfire, one of many raging across Spain, bore down on the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex on Friday, forcing an evacuation and temporarily suspending operations at one of NASA’s most important tracking stations. The tracking station is part of NASA’s Deep Space Network, operating in concert with similar facilities in California and Australia…
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SpaceX Falcon 9 launches Starlink satellites from West Coast
The Starlink 17-51 mission lifts off from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on July 25, 2026. Image: SpaceX.A SpaceX Falcon 9 launched from the West Coast Saturday, carrying another batch of satellites for the company’s Starlink internet service. Liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California occurred at 8:51…
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European Union grants US request to restrict satellite images of Iran War region
The European Union has begun delaying the release of satellite images showing shipping lanes near the Strait of Hormuz by 24 hours. The move comes in response to an earlier US government request and coincides with the Trump administration ramping up the war with Iran once again. The unusual change in the free and open…
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SpaceX Declines Falcon 9 Bookings Beyond 2028 to Steer Customers Toward Starship
The decision represents one of the most aggressive product-transition bets in aerospace history. Falcon 9 is the world’s most-flown orbital rocket and a proven revenue engine. Declining paying customers on a working vehicle in favor of one still in its test-flight phase is a move without real precedent at this scale. Starship’s most recent test,…
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NASA Awards CAPSTONE 02 to Advanced Space for Cislunar Navigation Demonstration
The mission builds on the original CAPSTONE, short for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, which became the first U.S. commercial mission to the Moon and the first spacecraft to operate in a near-rectilinear halo orbit, a nearly stable orbit maintained by the gravitational pull of both the Earth and the Moon.…
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NASA Sends Google’s Gemma Language Model Into Orbit Aboard a Satellite
The move reflects growing interest in running AI directly onboard spacecraft rather than relying on ground stations to process information after it is transmitted back to Earth. The latency of deep space communication makes onboard processing increasingly attractive for future missions, where waiting for instructions from the ground can slow operations. Google’s Gemma large language…