space

Building data centers in space was the new hot business. Elon Musk just broke it with a tweet

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The debate over the feasibility of building gigantic data centers in orbit had been heating up for months. It is Silicon Valley’s new big idea to solve the insatiable energy appetite of artificial intelligence. Until, as usual, Elon Musk has entered the conversation with the subtlety of a hammer. Elon Musk has joined the chat. After weeks of debate about the feasibility of building servers in space, Eric Berger, editor of Ars Technica, argued that will end up being a more plausible option when the technology exists to assemble satellites in orbit autonomously. It was the moment chosen by Elon Musk to enter the conversation. “It will be enough to scale the Starlink V3 satellites, which have high-speed laser links,” wrote the CEO of SpaceX. “SpaceX is going to do it,” he said. A phrase that has probably fallen like a blow on startups that are taking advantage of the momentum of AI to go out in search of financing. Why the hell do we want servers in space? The idea of ​​moving computing to Earth orbit responds to a very real crisis: AI is an energy monster, and Demand for data centers continues to grow. Given this panorama, space offers two advantages that are impossible on Earth: Almost unlimited energy: In a sun-synchronous orbit, solar panels receive sunlight almost continuously (more than 95% of the time). Free Cooling: Land-based data centers consume millions of liters of fresh water to cool. With a large enough radiator, the gap can be “an infinite heatsink at -270°C.” The heat would be radiated into the vacuum without wasting a single drop of water. The new titans of space AI. Musk is not the first to see the business. In fact, he arrives at a party where the first contracts are already being distributed. Jeff Bezos predicted during the Italian Tech Week that we will see “giant training clusters” of AI in orbit in the next 10 or 20 years. Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, bought rocket company Relativity Space precisely for this purpose. And Nvidia, the undisputed king of AI hardware, has actively backed startup Starcloud, which plans to launch the first NVIDIA H100 GPU into space this November, with the goal of eventually building a monster 5-gigawatt orbital data center. Why Musk would win. The vision of Bezos, Schmidt and Starcloud faces two colossal obstacles: the cost of launch and the construction of the servers themselves. Calculations for a 1 GW data center would require more than 150 launches with current technology. And Starcloud’s plan for a 4 kilometer wide array is a logistical nightmare. Elon Musk has Starship, the giant rocket on which all of his competitors’ business models depend to be profitable. And you don’t need build a new orbital data center. Just adapt and scale the one you already have. 10,000 satellites and counting. SpaceX’s Starlink constellation no longer competes against satellite internet, goes for terrestrial fiber. Musk’s company has already launched 10,000 satellites and is preparing the deployment of the new V3 satellites, designed for Starship with high-speed laser links. According to SpaceX itself, each Starship launch will add 60 terabits per second of capacity to a network that is already, in practice, a global computing and data mesh. While Starcloud needs to hire a rocket and assemble 4km-wide solar and cooling panels, Musk simply needs Starship to finish development to continue launching satellites. In Xataka | Starlink stopped competing with satellite Internet companies a long time ago: now it is going for something much bigger

Real Betis Balompié has joined the space race to solve a pressing problem: collisions between satellites

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It sounds unlikely, but it is a fact. Real Betis Balompié has entered the space sector. And without leaving Seville. GMV’s new partner. The historic football club and the aerospace company GMV have installed in the Rafael Gordillo sports city a satellite surveillance and tracking antenna. The agreement makes Betis the first football club in the world to host a facility dedicated to the sustainability of the space. More specifically, at pressing space debris challenge and the increasing risk of collisions in orbit. Betis 1 – Space trash 130 million. Earth orbit congestion may not be the main concern of green and white fans, but it is a danger for the satellites we use every daywhether with the car navigator, to see the weather forecast or when we turn on the broadcast of a football match. Thousands of operational satellites coexist with up to 130 million fragments of space debris: pieces of dead satellites and rocket remains that travel at hypersonic speeds and have triggered the evasion maneuvers of the active satellites. It is “one of the great challenges that humanity faces in the orbital environment,” says Miguel Ángel Molina, of GMV. Monitor and prevent. This is where the new 2.7 meter satellite dish installed at the Betis training center in Seville comes into play. Its mission is to track space debris and predict collisions in order to avoid them. To this end, GMV internally developed a system called Focusear. It works by “listening” to the signals that the satellites themselves emit in the Ku band (the same one used by satellite television) from the geostationary orbit, about 36,000 km high. Nanosecond precision. Upon receiving these signals, the system uses radio frequency triangulation techniques (TDoA and FDoA) to determine the position and orbit of the satellites with a margin of error of about three meters, equivalent to 10 nanoseconds. These data are vital to inform satellite operators, who are in charge of managing the evasion maneuvers of their fleets. But also to expand the European Space Surveillance System (EUSST), a catalog of objects that helps prevent large-scale collisions. Why Betis. The Sevillian club had created the Forever Green foundation, whose name has a double meaning. In addition to being green for its kit, Betis has become the most sustainable club in LaLiga (and the second in Europe) in terms of energy efficiency, recycling and water reuse. Expanding this vision of sustainability to space is literally taking its environmental commitment “beyond the Earth,” says Rafa Muela, manager of the foundation. But there is something else. Seville is the headquarters of the Spanish Space Agencyso the choice is not accidental. Somehow the Andalusian capital must be placed on the map of national spatial development. Image | GMV, Real Betis Balompié In Xataka | Three large pieces of space debris reenter every day: “one day our luck will run out and they will fall on someone”

In 20 years “millions of people” will live in space

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We knew that Jeff Bezos was lately more focused on his aerospace ventureBlue Origin, than on Amazon. What we didn’t know was that it has one of the most optimistic visions in the sector about the near future. Don’t be sad. During a talk with John Elkann (president of Ferrari and Stellantis) at the Italian Tech Week TurinBezos did not mince his words. The tycoon said he did not understand how “someone who is alive right now can be discouraged” about the future. The reason for your optimism? A near future where artificial intelligence, robotics and, above all, space exploration, converge in “multiple golden ages.” The future of humanity is not only on Earth; according to Jeff Bezos, it is about to expand exponentially through space. The role of Blue Origin. “I think in the next couple of decades, there will be millions of people living in space; that’s how quickly this is going to accelerate,” said Bezos, who I had already confessed in the past his expectation that Blue Origin will end up being bigger than Amazon. This optimism is not just rhetorical. Bezos is investing billions of his personal fortune each year to build new technologies for the commercial exploitation of space: New Glenn, Blue Origin’s heavy rocket that will make its first mission for NASA in November: launch the Escapade satellite into Mars orbit. Orbital Reef, the commercial space station in the form of a luxury hotel for millionaires that will have scientific modules for when the International Space Station is removed from orbit Blue Moon, the lunar module with which Blue Origin intends to surpass Starship by solving one of the big problems of the SpaceX ship: the evaporation of cryogenic propellants in space. Other lunar developments, such as the ability to make solar cells from lunar regolith. Bezos was clear: “If you’re going to go to the Moon and stay on the Moon, you need to use the Moon’s resources.” Exploit the Moon and space. One of Bezos’ goals is to turn the Moon into an industrial launch pad. “The Moon is a gift from the universe,” he said, noting that its low gravity makes it cost 30 times less energy to launch a kilogram of mass from the Moon than from Earth. In his vision, the Moon becomes a “rocket fuel depot” that will allow us to explore the rest of the solar system. Bezos’ vision directly connects the space race with the other great revolution of the moment: artificial intelligence. AI is a technology with an enormous energy thirst, and its data centers are becoming a true “energy hole” on Earth. Bezos’ solution: get them off the planet. The proposal is build gigantic data centers of gigawatts in space. The advantages are obvious: “We have solar power there 24/7, and solar power there has no clouds, no rain, no weather.” It’s not science fiction. In fact, Bezos predicts that this apparent science fiction will be economically viable very soon: “We will be able to surpass the cost of terrestrial data centers in space within the next two decades.” Space, he believes, will go from being a place for communications satellites to being the center of heavy industry and data infrastructure. In the end, Bezos’ vision unifies all the revolutions underway. If AI and robotics will take over production, what is left for humans? According to him, the freedom to choose. Bezos doesn’t believe we need to live in space to survive. Robotics technology will be so advanced that “we will be able to send robots to do that job.” So why will those millions of people go? Bezos’ answer is simple: “The majority will live there because they want to.” Images | Blue Origin In Xataka | Jeff Bezos has the world’s laziest metaphor for AI: “someone invented the plow and we all got rich”

Europe has done the only thing it could do to compete with SpaceX and China in space: merge its largest companies

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Europe has grown tired of watching from the sidelines how SpaceX and, increasingly, Chinaredefine the rules of the game in space. The continent’s response was inevitable: a historic fusion. The three European aerospace giants, Airbus, Leonardo and Thales, have signed a memorandum of understanding to combine its spatial divisions into a single, colossal enterprise. Merge or die. This is not news that we break every day. It is the most ambitious move in the European aerospace industry since the creation of the MBDA missile consortium in 2001. And at the same time, it is not an offensive move, but a strategic survival maneuver. Given the agility of reusable rockets and Elon Musk’s megaconstellations, the fragmentation of Europe had become an unsustainable burden. Now, the plan is to create a European champion with the critical mass necessary to at least be able to compete. A colossus about to be born. The agreement, which It’s been brewing for months. under the code name “Project Bromo”, it will give rise to a new company that, if approved by regulators, could be operational in 2027. The figures used give an idea of ​​the scale of the operation: a combined annual turnover of 6.5 billion euros, and nearly 25,000 employees spread throughout Europe. Airbus will have the majority stake with 35%, while the Italian Leonardo and the French Thales will share the rest almost equally, with 32.5% each. Despite the majority of Airbus, the government of the new colossus will be “balanced” and under joint control, as reported by the companies. What does each one contribute? Each partner will contribute his crown jewels in the space sector. Airbus will contribute with its Space Systems and Digital Space businesses. Leonardo will bring its Space Division to the table, including its valuable stakes in Telespazio and Thales Alenia Space. Thales will mainly contribute its shares in those same joint ventures (Thales Alenia Space and Telespazio) and Thales SESO. Why it was inevitable. The harsh reality is that Europe was falling behind, and very quickly. SpaceX’s disruption has been brutal, especially on two fronts: launch and satellites. While Europe continues recovering lost ground With the development of its Ariane rockets, Elon Musk’s company has not only radically lowered the cost of putting something into orbit, but has flooded the sky with its Starlink constellation and its military version, Starshield. Beating SpaceX is no longer possible. On October 19, the company surpassed a staggering number of 10,000 Starlink satellites launched in just over 300 launches of the Falcon 9 rocket. This network of small satellites has cannibalized the traditional market for large and expensive geostationary satellites, the pillar on which the business of European companies was based. The only thing Europe can do, and what this new giant is destined to do, is recover its technological sovereignty in space and, with it, its security. Image | Airbus In Xataka | “We are the company that has developed an orbital rocket the fastest”: PLD Space, one step away from making history from Spain

AI is running out of power in this world. So Nvidia has opted for servers in space

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The energy appetite of data centers is nothing new. Elon Musk predicts a shortage of transformers in two years. Sam Altman believes we will need an energy revolution, such as nuclear fusion, to keep pace. The planet was not prepared for so much energy demand. And that’s why Nvidia is funding a possible solution: deploy the servers outside of Earth. It’s not science fiction. It is the business model of several startups that propose building the next hyperdata centers in Earth orbit and even on the Moon. The idea, which until recently sounded far-fetched, is gaining traction driven mainly by two factors: the insatiable demand for AI and the low-cost launches that Starship promises. One of the companies leading this idea is Starcloud, supported by the NVIDIA Inception program. And he is so serious that he plans to launch his first satellite, the Starcloud-1in November. On board it will carry the first GPU for data centers launched into space: an NVIDIA H100. The difficult part will come later. Starcloud-1 is a test unit the size of a small refrigerator, but the company’s goal is to build a monster five-gigawatt orbital data center. Adding the solar panels and the enormous radiator, it would measure four kilometers wide. Its goal is the training of large AI models in orbit. Why in space? As detailed in an extensive white paperfuture models like GPT-6 or Llama 5 could require multi-gigawatt clusters, something “simply impossible with the current energy infrastructure” on Earth. In space, there is no such limitation. It’s more. According to Starcloud calculations, server energy costs are 10 times lower in space than on Earth. The value proposition of space data centers is based precisely on two pillars that are a problem on Earth: energy and cooling. Solar energy 24/7. On Earth, solar energy is intermittent. They depend on the day/night cycle, the weather and the atmosphere, which attenuates the radiation. In space, things change. By placing your data centers in a sun-synchronous “dawn-dusk” orbit, Satellites follow the line that divides day and night on Earth. With the panels illuminated by the sun almost continuously, the system increases its capacity to more than 95%. “Almost unlimited, low-cost renewable energy,” in the words of Starcloud. And the refrigeration? How would they dissipate all that heat? Land-based data centers consume millions of liters of fresh water to cool. There is no water in space, but they have something much better: an infinite heatsink at -270°C. The plan is not to ventilate the servers. The heat generated by GPUs (such as the H100) will be managed within sealed modules using liquid cooling (direct-to-chip or immersion), like high-performance systems on Earth. The difference is that this hot liquid does not go to an evaporation tower, but is pumped to gigantic radiator panels. These panels simply radiate waste heat into the vacuum of space in the form of infrared radiation. The Starcloud white paper details the calculations using the Stefan-Boltzmann law, estimating that a radiator at 20°C can cleanly dissipate more than 630 watts per square meter. Without using a single drop of water. Not everything that glitters in space is gold. The pillar that supports this entire concept is the launch of high-capacity reusable rockets, such as SpaceX’s Starship. Starcloud calculations are based on a long-term cost of $30 per kilo put into orbit. But Starship is not ready, and it is certainly far from achieving its full and rapid reusability capability. If that cost does not materialize, the economic viability of the system collapses. The other big problem is radiation. Commercial GPUs are not designed for space. Cosmic radiation and solar flares can fry electronics. The solution is shielding, which adds mass and therefore launch cost. Not to mention that maintenance is not possible with current technology.

As if we didn’t have enough climate worries on Earth, a new threat is coming: space tornadoes

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Before we looked at the sky to predict the weather. Now we look at the forecast in an app provided by incredibly powerful simulations based on radar and satellite data. Thus, we can see the path of a hurricane days before it makes landfall, potentially saving thousands of lives. But what about the “tornadoes” that come from space? Sorry? It turns out that interplanetary space is not a quiet vacuum, and a new study warns of a phenomenon that has already been baptized with a disturbing name: “space tornadoes.” They are not wind funnels that carry the debris of the galaxy with them; They are actually rotating vortexes of plasma and magnetic fields that travel at insane speeds through space. But the most worrying thing is not that they exist, but where are formed. The research reveals that these vortices do not necessarily originate from the Sun, but can be born spontaneously in deep space, as a result of collisions between larger solar storms. And yes, they are powerful enough to wreak havoc on Earth. A magnetic problem. When astronomers talk about space weather, they’re not talking about a meteor shower. The weather engine of our solar system is the Sun. From time to time, our star spits out gigantic eruptions of charged particles and magnetic fields. The most powerful event of this type is Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). CMEs travel at speeds of up to 2,900 kilometers per second. When one hits the Earth, it interacts with our natural magnetic shield (the magnetosphere) and can cause a geomagnetic storm. The good thing is that this interaction produces incredibly beautiful northern and southern lights. The downside is that a severe geomagnetic storm can interfere with power grids, overheat transformers to the point of failure, and damage satellites vital to communications and GPS. The mystery of ghost storms. This is where the new research begins. In 2023, a team of scientists at the University of Michigan ran into a problem: They were recording geomagnetic storms on Earth that didn’t match any CME that had been predicted to hit us. They were “phantom storms.” The hypothesis: that smaller, more dangerous space weather events were forming on the way from the Sun to the Earth, rather than directly at the Sun. According to a paper by the researchers in The ConversationThe main suspect was structures known as “flux ropes,” bundles of magnetic fields twisted back on themselves that are affectionately referred to as magnetic tornadoes. They had already been observed, but their exact origin and whether they were powerful enough to cause problems on their own were unknown. The problem was how to detect them. Current space weather simulations are designed to look at “big” things (CMEs), not little vortices. These flux ropes were too small for the models to resolve. The researchers compare it to “trying to forecast a hurricane with a simulation that only shows you global weather patterns.” Since they couldn’t increase the resolution of the entire solar system (it would be computationally prohibitive), the team did something smarter: they created an ultra-high-resolution simulation “corridor,” nearly 100 times finer than previous models, centered on the path of a specific solar flare that occurred in May 2024. And then they saw them. The simulation revealed the birth mechanism of these tornadoes. It happened when the CME “crashed” into the slower solar wind in front of it. The researchers’ own analogy is perfect: it was like “watching a hurricane generate a cluster of tornadoes in its wake.” The study confirms this phenomenon for the first time through simulation. The collision between the CME and the solar wind creates an intense “current sheet.” In that area, a process called magnetic reconnection (when magnetic field lines violently break and reconfigure) “spits out” these mesoscale vortices. Why are they dangerous? The simulation demonstrated that these mesoscopic “flow ropes” are not minor phenomena. They contain magnetic fields (about 30 nanoTeslas) “strong enough to trigger a significant geomagnetic storm” on their own. The real danger is that, to our current systems, they are almost invisible. While a giant CME is an obvious and massive threat that we can track from the Sun, these “space tornadoes” that form along the way would appear, at best, as a “small blip” on monitors. We could be hit by a geomagnetic storm capable of damaging the electrical grid with little prior warning. Our best weapon. Satellite constellations. This discovery shows that our way of monitoring space weather is insufficient. Instead of single-point satellites (like the DSCOVR observatory, which can only measure what passes in front of it), we need a constellation of satellites flying in formation. Researchers have proposed a mission designed precisely for this. It would be called SWIFT (Space Weather Investigation Frontier) and it would be a constellation of four satellites flying in a tetrahedron formation, capable of measuring these vortices with precision. Only by measuring the same phenomenon from multiple points at the same time can we understand its real 3D structure and its danger. Image | NOAA, Mojtaba Akhavan-Tafti and Chip Manchester In Xataka | NASA has calculated how much time we would have to prepare for a devastating solar storm and has set to work to get that time

PLD Space, one step away from becoming the company that has developed an orbital rocket the fastest

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Whether in the Elche factory, on a test bench at Teruel airport or on the launch pad under construction in French Guiana, PLD Space is abuzz. The company advances one milestone per week and he tells us why: the Miura 5 rocket is practically ready at the design level. “I would tell you that it is 99%,” says Raúl Torres, CEO of the company, in an interview with Xataka. Candidate to become the Europe’s first private orbital rocketthe Miura 5 is about to finish the Critical Design Review (CDR) and take shape for the first time. “Now we are finishing the QM1 qualification models and starting the QM2, which means that shortly, and I’ll leave it there, we are going to have a first teachable Miura 5,” he reveals for the first time. This first fully integrated model will not fly, but will allow PLD to close engineering fronts and carry out key tests before the end of the year. If everything goes according to plan, the rocket chosen to take off will begin assembly in January. “The idea would be that in May we would be in Guyana to start doing the combined tests with the French space agency CNES,” confirms Torres, adjusting the schedule that originally pointed to a launch at the end of 2025. It is not an unexpected adjustment, but it was pending official confirmation since Chris Larmour, founder of Orbex, PLD’s British competitor, 1,000 euros were bet with Raúl Torres that the Miura 5 would not fly in 2025. Raúl accepted the bet. Will he pay Larmour now? “We have invited him to come sign the rocket at the end of the year, we are waiting for him to answer us,” says Torres. “I would like Orbex to also invite me at the end of the year to sign their rocket. Mine is going to sign it, so I only have to pay half of the bet.” Works in Guayana, lighting in Teruel If the Miura 5 flies in early 2026, PLD Space will be one of the fastest companies to have developed an orbital launcher, which is even more impressive considering the Spanish company’s financing compared to several of its competitors. But PLD Space is not starting from scratch. The successful launch of the Miura 1 suborbital rocket in October 2023 was the graduation of a team that now faces a higher challenge. “Miura 1 has been like primary school, ESO and high school, and now we are at university,” explains Torres. “That is why we have developed Miura 5 so quickly, because we have gone one step ahead with many developments.” Technologies such as the stage power system, cryogenic protections or the welding techniques of the Miura 5 are a direct inheritance from its little brother. However, “university” brings new and more complicated subjects. The most obvious technological leap is in the Miura 5 engines. The five TEPREL-C of the first stage and the vacuum-optimized TEPREL-C of the second They are beasts of another categoryespecially due to the introduction of turbopumps. PLD has developed most of the critical components in-house, such as liquid oxygen and kerosene valves. Combustion chambers are manufactured by electroplating copper and nickel, turbopump housings are 3D printed, and high-precision rotating components are machined. The objective is to achieve a production rate that allows one engine to be manufactured every two weeks in the Elche warehouse. PLD Space passed a fundamental milestone on October 6 with the first static ignition of a fully integrated TEPREL-C Vac in its facilities at Teruel airport. With 75 kN of thrust, it is one of the most powerful vacuum engines ever powered by a private company in Europe. But the real muscle of the rocket will be in the five TEPREL-C engines responsible for takeoff. Each one has 190 kN of thrust, almost double than its competitors. When will we see the first roar of a Miura 5 with the TEPREL-C fully integrated? “In one quarter you should expect the long and qualification tests of both the first and second stages, and also the restart test of both engines,” Torres told Xataka. To validate each component, PLD Space has also deployed new infrastructure at the Teruel airport. The T3 bench has been the protagonist of the static and compression tests of the rocket structures. Valves and gas generators are tested on bench T6. Bench T7 will be used for qualification of first stage Teprel-C engines and second stage long duration ignitions. The T9 bench will be used to test the separation between the first and second stages. Meanwhile, thousands of kilometers across the Atlantic, PLD Space construction in French Guiana has begun. PLD has become the first New Space company to begin construction of its own launch base at the Guyana Space Center. “It is very likely that Miura 5 will be before Kourou’s works,” says Torres. The first structures of the launch pad They are being built in Spain. The rocket should arrive in South America in May. Advances in reuse since flight 1 Inspired by SpaceX, PLD does not conceive of a modern launcher without reuse. And their plan for the Miura 5 is to start collecting landing data from the first flight. If it achieves stage separation on its debut launch, the rocket will perform a maneuver boostback like that of the Falcon 9. “In flight one mission, in the test flight that we will do next year, we are going to try to re-enter the stage,” confirms Torres. After separation, the rocket will turn around and turn on its central engine for a few seconds to brake. “The booster will be ready to re-enter. We don’t want to miss the slightest opportunity to collect data.” And he talks about data because he does not expect to recover the rocket. “Evidently, it’s not going to happen the first time.” The first flight won’t even have a parachute. The main objective is to survive reentry from a hypersonic speed at Mach … Read more

Data centers for AI are an energy hole. Jeff Bezos’s solution: Build them in space

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In the next two decades we will see data centers at Gigavatio scale orbiting the Earth. Or at least that is the prediction that has launched The founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos. He said it during his speech at the Italian Tech Week in Turin, where he was able to establish conversation with John Elkann, president of Ferrari and Stellantis. Bezos’s proposal. Space data centers would take advantage of solar energy 24 hours a day, cloudless, rain or night cycles that interrupt the supply. According to Bezosthese “giant training clusters” of artificial intelligence would be more efficient and, eventually, more economical than terrestrial facilities. “We can exceed the cost of land data centers in space in the coming decades,” he said. Why now talks about this. The infrastructure demand for AI is becoming a large hole for the planet. Current data centers consume massive amounts of electricity and water to cool its servers, a problem that is aggravated with each new artificial intelligence model. Given this pressure, large technology explore alternatives: from Locate them in ships o Nordic countries until sink into the ocean. And of course, if we have capacity problems on Earth, some technological ones already think about taking the letter to send them to space. The technical advantages. In space, temperatures range between -120 ° C under direct sunlight and -270 ° C in shadow, which would greatly simplify equipment cooling. Constant solar energy would eliminate dependence on land electrical networks. Bezos places this development as’Natural evolution‘of a process that has already begun with weather and communications satellites. “The next step will be the data centers and then other types of manufacturing,” he explained. The real challenges. As they point out from Tom’s hardwarebuilding a spatial data center of a Gigavatio would require solar panels that would cover between 2.4 and 3.3 million square meters, with an estimated weight of 9,000 to 11,250 metric tons only in photovoltaic material. Transporting all that equipment to space would cost between $ 13,700 and 25,000 million with current technology, needing more than 150 launches. To this is added the difficulty of maintenance, updates and the inherent risk of space releases. Parallelism with AI. Bezos compared The current moment of artificial intelligence With the bubble Puntocom of the early 2000s. “We should be extremely optimistic about the social and beneficial consequences of AI,” he said, although he warned of the possibility of speculative bubbles. His message: Do not confuse possible excesses of the market with the reality of technological advances, whose benefits consider that “they will spread widely and reach everywhere.” When It will be done reality?. Bezos places the temporary horizon “in more than 10 years, but no more than 20”. Today, the project is commercially unfeasible, but its vision starts from the premise that the launch costs will continue to go down and the technology will mature. It remains to be seen, after two decades, part of our digital infrastructure is in orbit, beyond the existing one. In Xataka | Nvidia has control of the most powerful chips of AI: OpenAi, Broadcom and TSMC want to end their XPUS

NASA has managed to grow lettuce in space. What he has discovered later was not part of the plan

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In the International Space Station they are cultivating lettuce that seem as green as those of any land greenhouse. Astronauts water them with recycled water, illuminate them with pink LED lights and collect them carefully, as if they were the first daily gesture of an interplanetary humanity. It is the perfect image of a self -sufficient future: life making its way in a vacuum. However, the data is telling another story. A discouraging finding. A study Posted in Nature – Based in NASA’s open scientific repository – he has detected that space crops are losing nutrients while the human body, in microgravity, becomes more fragile. The analysis shows that the lettuce cultivated in the International Space Station and in the China Tiangong II ship contains between 29 % and 31 % less calcium and about 25 % less magnesium than its land equivalent. Iron appears in variable quantities and potassium, sometimes, shoots. At first glance, plants seem healthy, but their nutritional value bites. “A space salad can be perfect in the photos, but does not strengthens the bones,” The authors warn. And, in microgravity, the human body already loses bone mass rapidly; A diet with less calcium only accelerates the problem, while the lack of iron aggravates anemia and fatigue. What is behind. Microgravity alters more than satellite trajectories: it modifies the way in which plants absorb nutrients, distribute water and handle oxidative stress. Antioxidants such as phenolic and carotenoids decrease, leaving plants – already who consume them – with less defense against radiation. The study detected That species cultivated in orbit produce less protective molecules and more compounds associated with stress, as if plants were in survival mode. That chemical imbalance not only affects the taste, but also its ability to nourish. A cocktail of deficiencies. But not only plants change, astronauts too. According to NASA Twins Study data and Jaxa experiments, They were recorded Alterations in 163 genes linked to calcium metabolism, responsible for bone formation and immune regulation. Some of these genes behave anomalously in microgravity, which accelerates the loss of bone density and weakens the defenses. Human sampling analysis also show signs of permeable intestine syndrome or Leaky Gut: The intestinal wall, normally hermetic, becomes porous. Inflammatory molecules are filtered, the nutrients are absorbed worse and the immune system enters into tension. In that context, a diet devoid of iron and antioxidants can multiply exhaustion, cramps and radiation vulnerability. A dangerous combination when each bite counts. The space database. The work combines decades of astronaut records with the results of agricultural experiments in orbit. From the repositories OSD and Soma From NASA, scientists compared the mineral and antioxidant profiles of spatial crops with those of the earth and crossed them with human biomarkers. The objective was not only to analyze vegetables, but to understand how cultivated food interacts with a body that changes in microgravity. As explained on the Earth pageThe project is part of NASA’s analysis work groups, which gather researchers and volunteers from all over the world to study nutrition, biology and space health using open data. Looking for solutions. Even so, the panorama is not entirely discouraging. Scientists are applying bioengineering and biofortification to increase calcium, magnesium and iron content in plants. They also test crops rich in flavonoids such as quercetin – present in onion, broccoli and red lettuce – which protects cells and strengthens bones. According to Earthspecies such as soybeans, garlic or parsley already show natural advantages and could replace lettuce as the basis of the space diet. Besides, As we explain in Xatakaa team managed to ferment miso at the International Space Station, demonstrating that microbial processes can prosper in orbit. Fermentation not only improves flavor: it strengthens the intestinal microbiota and could help repair the intestinal barrier damaged by microgravity. And on earth, agencies continue to innovate. The Italian Space Agency It is developing A superannan and more nutritious rice, adapted to lunar soils and small spaces. It is the same philosophy proposed by the study: genetically designed crops to survive and feed better. Beyond plants, researchers also look towards alternative protein sources, Like the cricketscapable of closing ecological cycles in closed systems and providing essential nutrients with a minimum expenditure of resources. Mars’s challenge. The research is set on the missions to Mars, where each lost nutrient account. The full trip could last three years without refueling, and each food will depend on what is grown on board. If these plants lack calcium or antioxidants, crew health could deteriorate long before landing on the red planet. “Improve orbit nutrition today feels the foundations to survive on Mars tomorrow,” The authors of the study conclude. Space agriculture is not an aesthetic experiment: it is a matter of survival. Beyond the menu. Cultivating food in space is possible, but it is not yet enough. Plants lose nutrients, the human body changes and solutions advance more slowly than missions. What this study makes it clear is that space agriculture is no longer just about filling stomachs: it is part of the health system of the future. Biofortification, fermentation, microbiota and personalized nutrition will be as important as rockets or space costumes. Survival outside the earth will depend on both engineering and biology. Perhaps that is the deepest lesson in this finding: that human life – and that of the plants that support it – remains anchored to terrestrial gravity. Each outbreak cultivated in space reminds us where we come from and what we still do not carry with us: the earth itself. Image | Freepik Xataka | If the question is “what we will eat on the moon” the answer is “risotto”. At least if the Italians leave with their

Chinese astronauts have spent six hours reinforcing tiangong against an increasingly dangerous enemy: space garbage

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The night in orbit just leaves truce. In low orbit, the Tiangong Space Station It becomes the scene of a constant activity that requires millimeter precision. In the last extravehicular exitChinese astronauts had to face a challenge that does not come from technical failures or scientific experiments, but from a silent enemy that multiplies the risks of each mission: the Space garbage which accumulates in the low terrestrial orbit and threatens to hit the structure of the complex. The schedule of China’s manned flight agency places the start of extravehicular activity on September 25 at 19:45 (Beijing time), with Wang Jie as the first astronaut to leave the Wentian module. It was followed shortly after Chen Zhongrui, in charge of attending the installation of the equipment. Chen Dong, from inside Tiangong, managed communications with the control center and supported his teammates throughout the maneuver. The walk concluded at dawn, at 1:35 of September 26, when the two crew closed the hatch after completing the planned agenda. The maneuver was carried out with support from the robotic arm of the station and the team on land. Sludes against fragments: Tiangong’s strategy to resist in space During the walk, the main objective was to install a protection device against Orbital fragmentsdesigned to reinforce the most exposed areas of the station. The operation also included the review of the state of external equipment and structures, with special attention to the systems that suffer greater wear due to continuous exposure to the spatial environment. According to those responsible for the programthis combination of installation and maintenance seeks to ensure that Tiangong maintains its operational capacity in the middle of an increasingly saturated environment of remains. The increase in spatial garbage in the low orbit is one of the factors that most worries agencies in recent years. Each launch adds fragments that, although small, reach speeds that multiply their damage. For China, reinforcing Tiangong does not respond to a specific incident, but to the need to get ahead of an increasingly complex scenario. China is not the only one that has had to reinforce its station in the face of the threat of orbital fragments. The International Space Station Specific armor systems for years have beenknown as anti-mmod shields, which protect their habitable modules from impacts from Micrometeoritos and space garbage. The difference is in the context: it is an infrastructure with more than two decades of service, which has needed to adapt continuously to an increasingly congested environment. In the ISS, this philosophy materializes in shields in Whipple and Stupfed Whipple layers, with several hundred shields distributed in critical areas. The comparison between Tiangong and the International Space Station helps to understand the scope of its protection systems. The Chinese station completed its construction in 2022 with a T configuration formed by the Tianhe, Wentian and Mengtian modules. The ISS, on the other hand, began to assemble in 1998 and ended its main segment in 2011, with a much broader and more complex structure. This difference in dimensions and seniority explains why its shields follow different logics: ISS combines protections included from its design with reinforcements added over the years, while Tiangong integrates solutions designed from the beginning for a more congested environment. The closure of this extravehicular activity does not imply a break, but the beginning of a new stage for the Shenzhou-20 mission. The three astronauts They will continue with numerous scientific experiments and technological tests, in addition to participating in on -board celebrations linked to the Chinese calendar. The installation of additional shields has a clear objective: to hold over time the crew safety and the integrity of Tiangong, which aspires to consolidate as a stable basis for space research in the midst of a more demanding orbital environment. Images | Xinhua In Xataka | 24 years ago, the earth was symmetrical. Now the northern hemisphere is “unequivocally” darker than the southern hemisphere

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