space

Poland and Spain are the European countries that have increased their contribution to space the most. For very different reasons

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“Europe wants to get its act together in space matters and become independent from States, so in 2025 it has launched the ambitious 15-year plan.”Strategy 2040: Elevating Europe’s future“, ha merged its largest companies and has approved a historic budget of more than 22,000 million euros. In this new budget of the European Space Agency, there are two countries that have taken a step forward in investment: Poland and Spain. Spain and Poland take a step forward. With a contribution of 1,854 million euros, the Spanish state goes from fifth to fourth positiononly behind Germany, France and Italy. Since 2022 it has surpassed the United Kingdom, the only member state that has been reducing its contribution since 2022. Poland has gone from twelfth place to become the eighth largest contributor. Although the objective of Spain and Poland is the same, their motivations are different: while the former’s priority is to support its industrial base, for the latter security and autonomy are essential. The success of ESA’s budget request lies in the programs it houses and how each country and its priorities can influence the general space spending trends of the old continent. The jewel in the crown: EOGS-ESA. One of the great engines is Earth Observation Governmental Service (Government Earth Observation Service), a key program of the European Space Agency focused on Earth observation with satellite data, but not only for science or climate, but also for defense and security in what they call dual use, civil and military. The economic injection from Poland and Spain was significant: 325 million euros for the Spanish state and 109 million euros for the Eastern country, more than half of what it put in 2022. But both financed different components of the project that align with their interests. Each country has its reasons. Thus, Poland was allocated to shared European systems and resilience networks (services that work even if there are failures or sabotage), which fits with its concern for national security, the protection of strategic infrastructures and obviously, the context of the war in Ukraine. For its part, Spain opted for a part of the most tangible project: building satellites, more specifically the “Atlantic Constellation“, a constellation of small satellites shared with Portugal to observe the Atlantic. Missing launchers. In Europe, traditionally the launching countries have been France, Germany and Italy through Ariane and Vega, but in recent years the panorama has become more complicated. On the one hand, the success of SpaceX has overshadowed European work and on the other, the gap in launches that has existed in recent years, as a result of Ariane 6 delaysthe breaking of collaborations with Russia and the stoppage of Vega-C. So other countries with less tradition have taken a step forward, improving competitiveness. In the case of Spain, it has allocated 169 million to miuraa reusable small satellite launcher from the company PLD Space. Poland has increased its contribution to the Future Launcher Preparatory Programme, an ESA program focused on new innovative launcher technologies. From 2022 to 2025 it has gone from providing three million to 48. Bringing historic programs to life. Although they had not previously been a priority for both countries, Poland and Spain have set their sights on older programs such as ‘Celeste’ or ‘Iris2’. ‘Celeste’ is an ESA mission based on low orbit satellites that reinforces Galileo in achieving more precise and difficult to interfere navigation, with a scope of application in the development of autonomous vehicles, drones and critical infrastructures. Poland has made its debut with a contribution of 10 million and Spain has tripled its investment. ‘Iris2‘ is something like the European Starlink, made up of a network of about 300 satellites that will provide secure, fast and resilient communications to EU governments and companies. With supervision from ESA, the objective is to guarantee European digital sovereignty. Its first launch is scheduled for 2029. In this mission, Spain has emerged by contributing much more than any other member state to Element 3, which focuses on user terminals, new services and missions, with 140 million euros. More R + D + i. Likewise, both states have gained weight in FutureEOESA’s R&D program for Earth observation focused on climate change, ecosystem collapse, human health and the impact of resource consumption. Thus, Poland and Spain went from 8.5 and 20 million respectively in 2022 to 35 and 110 million in this new budget. Poland’s space exploration. Poland has risen from 12.5 million to 61 million euros in just three years, with more than half of that increase (30 million) allocated to lunar exploration. However, they have just send its first astronaut in decades: Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, on an Ignis trade mission. The pioneer was Mirosław Hermaszewski, in 1978. In Xataka | “Elon Musk can monopolize everything,” warns Arianespace, which has been launching all of Europe’s satellites for 40 years In Xataka | A space war looms over our heads and Europe is the power that invests the least in defense technology Cover | Image from freepik

Space reuse seemed like a SpaceX thing. China is already trying to replicate the formula with LandSpace

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For decades, access to space was conditioned by a simple and very expensive logic: each launch was an almost unrepeatable operation, with rockets designed to be used only once. That model turned cost per kilo into a structural barrier for the entire industry. Reuse broke that inertia and changed the rules of the game, not as an incremental improvement, but as a different way of thinking about launches. Today, that idea has become the bar for who can compete in the new space economy. The trajectory that is currently taken as a model was not born from a comfortable position. In 2008, SpaceX faced a sequence of technical failures with the Falcon 1 that left the company with no financial margin. Elon Musk even admitted that a fourth explosion would have meant the end of the project. The turning point came first with a successful launch to orbit and, almost three months later, with a NASA contract to transport cargo to the International Space Station. That combination gave oxygen to a company that was still far from demonstrating sustained reliability. When launching is no longer the most expensive. The traditional model assumed that launch was the most expensive and risky part of any orbital mission. NASA analyzes place Historical costs in a typical range of between $10,000 and more than $20,000 per kilo in low orbit, with an average cost around $18,500/kg. The drop in prices associated with reuse altered that balance: with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, the cost per kilo fell into the range of $3,000 to $1,500. By reducing the cost of travel, the door was opened to launch more often and rethink the scale of projects. Why LandSpace is coming into the picture now. In this new scenario of more frequent and scale-oriented launches appears LandSpace. Founded in 2015, a few years after China opened the space sector to private capital, the company has positioned itself as a player focused on building a complete chain from design and manufacturing to launch. Its program aims to recover and reuse the first stage, and in parallel it is committed to liquid oxygen and methane launchers, a combination linked in the industry to cost reduction strategies. This approach fits with China’s need to deploy large satellite constellations in the coming decades. Zhuque-3 from LandSpace With the Zhuque-3LandSpace proposed something unprecedented in China for an orbital-class launcher: attempting to recover the first stage in a real flight. The launch made this vehicle the largest Chinese commercial launcher ever flown and the first by a private company in the country to attempt a vertical landing after completing its primary mission. The profile was carefully planned, with a recovery area built specifically for it in the Gobi Desert. LandSpace has not given figures on the probability of success, and the flight was functioning as a recovery test in real conditions. Zhuque-3 from LandSpace Similar to Falcon 9, with nods to Starship. The comparison with SpaceX is not a rhetorical device, it is in the design itself. Zhuque-3 adopts a very recognizable pattern: nine engines in the first stage, return maneuver, aerodynamic control with grid ends and legs for a vertical landing. At the same time, it is not a carbon copy of the Falcon 9. The rocket is built of stainless steel and uses methane and liquid oxygen as propellants, two features associated with the development of Starship. SpaceX Falcon 9 The December attempt did not end as LandSpace had planned. After takeoff, the Zhuque-3 completed its initial phase of flight, but the first stage failed to execute the final landing maneuver. According to Reutersthe booster had to start its engines about three kilometers from the ground to stop the descent and carry out a controlled landing, something that did not occur. The result was an impact rather than a vertical landing. The design of the test itself assumed that risk: it was a reuse test, not a complete operational mission. Reuse and risk tolerance. The commitment to reusable rockets forces us to review how risk is understood within the Chinese space sector. The aforementioned agency highlights that the local industry has historically been dominated by state companies reluctant to see visible failures. The entry of private companies like LandSpace is introducing another logic, closer to controlled experimentation. The fact that failed attempts are documented and publicly explained suggests that the priority is beginning to shift from immediate success to the accumulation of experience, a necessary condition for reuse to be more than a promise. Images | LandSpace | SpaceX In Xataka | While Silicon Valley dreams of servers in orbit, Russia prepares a nuclear reactor on lunar soil

A Russian family lived isolated in Siberia for more than 40 years. He didn’t know about World War II or the space race.

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In the cold, vast and desolate siberian taiga one would expect to find spruce trees, maples, streams and acres covered in frozen silt. Maybe (hopefully) some lone pso or wolf. What no one would include on that list is what he discovered around mid 1978 an expedition that flew over a mountain located more than 240 km from any human trace. There, in the middle of the Abakan mountain rangea group of geologists came across a family that had been isolated for 42 years. Its story still fascinates today. And that cabin? Such a question must have been asked 47 years ago by a group of Soviet geologists flying over the Siberian taiga, an area rich in oil, gas and mineral reserves. He ran summer of 1978 and the team, led by Galina Pismenskaya, was traveling by helicopter in a region of Siberia located 160 km from the border with Mongolia when the pilot saw something between the trees. Something unexpected. A rudimentary cabin with a small garden. In most parts of the planet, such an image would be of little interest, but Pismenskaya’s team was supposedly in an unpopulated area. In fact, the Soviet authorities were not aware that anyone lived there. The nearest houses were supposed to be more than 200 kilometers away, so the question was obvious… What the hell was that shack doing there, built next to a stream, among trees? They were so intrigued that geologists decided to land. “We come to visit”. The impressions of Pismenskaya and her colleagues when approaching the hut we know them thanks to Vasily Peskova Russian journalist and traveler who would later interview the protagonists of that story to collect it in a book. Upon landing, the researchers found a hut made with the little that the taiga offered: bark, branches, trunks and pieces of wood blackened by humidity. On one side there was a tiny window. On the other side there was a door through which an old man appeared. “Like something out of a fairy tale”, would relate some time later Pismenskaya, who recalled that the man was barefoot, was wearing a patched shirt and pants and sported a scraggly beard. “He seemed scared. We had to say something, so I started: ‘Greetings, Grandpa! We’ve come to see you.’” The fact is that that old man was not alone. When they entered the hut with him, the geologists discovered that he lived with his four children. They all shared that wooden construction without rooms, blackened by smoke, cold and with the floor covered in shells. Upon seeing the new arrivals, one of the young women began to pray, scared. Another, hidden behind a post, ended up collapsing from suffocation. Logical. The family had not seen another human for four decades. Dating back to 1936. The old man in question was called Karp Osipovich Lykov and the fact that he lived there, in conditions almost medieval people, hundreds of kilometers from any hint of civilization and surrounded only by his children, is explained in light of what happened in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. Just like his Karp family was an old believera member of a church split from Orthodox Christianity that embraced the ancient liturgy and ecclesiastical canons. The path of Karp’s coreligionists had diverged from the Russian Orthodox already in the 17th century, after Nikon’s reformwhich made them outcasts. This had happened in times of Peter I…and with the Bolsheviks. This harassment affected the Lykov family directly. Around 1936, a patrol shot his brother on the outskirts of the village where they lived, so Karp made a radical decision: he gathered his wife Akulina and the two children they had at the time (Savin, nine years old, and Natalia, two) and escaped into the forest. Literally. He walked away as far as he could. Without looking back and with light luggage that included just a handful of seeds, a rudimentary spinning wheel, a couple of jugs to boil water and the clothes they were wearing. Once in the taiga, the family built a cabin with what they had on hand, set up a garden and continued with a life marked by isolation, their beliefs and deprivation. In 1940 the couple had their third son, Dmitry; and four years later the fourth and last daughter, Agafia, was born. Back to history. The Lykovs continued with that life until Osipovich’s helicopter located them in the summer of 1978. It may sound strange, but the family had settled in a particularly inhospitable place. No one saw them before because no one looked there. The marriage moved as he encountered difficulties, moving further and further away from the villages and towns, until settling at a point located more than 240 km of the nearest settlement. Not even the Soviet authorities were aware of the existence of that family. The consequences of that isolation are obvious. For the Lykovs, time, politics, science… stopped dead in 1936. The family did not know that Europe had been shaken by World War II, nor that man had stepped on the Moon in 1969, nor was it aware of the space race, the name Kennedy or the Beatles did not ring a bell… Some family members marveled at seeing a television or items as seemingly simple as matches or a roll of transparent cellophane. Fascinating yes, bucolic no. The Lykovs’ 42 years of isolation were, however, hardly bucolic. Their cabin was built next to a stream and the forest offered them wood, fruit and even game, but the harsh conditions of the taiga subjected them to a constant test. Especially the first years. Agafia even told how towards the end of the 1950s the family faced their peculiar “years of hunger”, during which they had to decide whether to eat the little they harvested or save some of the seeds to grow them the following year. “We were hungry all the time,” he admits. Years later the family suffered a frost … Read more

The European Space Agency has always launched rockets from South America. Norway is very close to changing that

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The Arctic is no longer just that vast ice desert at the end of the world, but it has become a strategic point for many countries that they do not want to waste. And Europe does not want to let him escape, now opting to migrate the launch of part of your rockets from South America to this new location, something that has a great geopolitical strategy behind it. An agreement. The European Space Agency (ESA) and Norway recently signed an agreement to promote the creation of a new research center in the north of our planet: the ESA Arctic Space Center in Tromso. But it is not just another research center, but rather it is Europe’s response to ensure its autonomy in observation, navigation and communications in a region where it is already Russia and China is deploying its own infrastructure. The location. Choosing Tromsø as the city where to locate this new launch zone is not something chosen at random. If we go to a map, we can locate it far above the Arctic Circle, already being a city that has become a vibrant ecosystem of satellite data. Looking back, Tromsø already hosts mission control Arctic Weather Satellite, a satellite launched in 2024 that tried to demonstrate how a polar constellation can save lives through very accurate weather forecasts. But it also has a large number of institutions that make it a true Silicon Valley of the cold, housing the Secretariat of the Arctic Council and the Norwegian Polar Institute. A greater amount of data. The agreement signed between ESA and the Norwegian agency NOSA establishes a working group that will define the details before the end of 2026. This center is defined as an opportunity to monitor the melting of the Arctic, which warming four times faster than the global averagewhich gives us data on what will happen in the rest of the planet. It also entails an important national security reason, since today maritime traffic in the Northeast Passage does not stop increasing, and this means having signs of Galileo It allows you to have better control of everything that happens here. That is why, more than science, we are facing a critical center for civil security, search and rescue. The change of location. Until now, our gateway to space was French Guiana for a reason of basic physics: its proximity to the equator allows us to take advantage of the “impulse” of the Earth’s rotation to launch heavy satellites. However, the center of Tromsø and the new Nordic ports respond to a different need: polar orbit. That is why while from South America it is ideal to launch television satellites that remain “fixed” on the equator, the Arctic is the perfect balcony for satellites that must monitor melting ice or borders. Launching from the Pole, the satellite enters directly onto a North-South path that allows it to scan every corner of the planet as the Earth rotates below. In addition, being on the axis of rotation, rockets do not have to “fight” against the Earth’s lateral spin, which makes observation missions much more efficient and cheaper. Geopolitics. Beyond science, in this case there is a reading of territorial sovereigntysince while China invests in the “Polar Silk Road” and Russia increases its infrastructure in Siberia, Europe needs its own eyes in the north. In this way, while from South America it is ideal to launch television satellites that remain “fixed” on the equator, the Arctic is the perfect balcony for satellites that must monitor melting ice or borders. In this way, the Tromsø–Svalbard axis, added to the new spaceports of Andøya (Norway) and Kiruna (Sweden), consolidates northern Europe as the main gateway to space on the continent. This decision reduces dependence on external infrastructure as occurred in South America and obviously guarantees that all data remains in European territory. What’s next now. Norway, a member of ESA since 1987, brings its network of polar stations and its unique experience in polar orbit operations that are undoubtedly crucial in the current situation. From now on, the working group that has been formed has two years to design the governance and calendar of a center that promises to be “the control tower” of the European future in the Arctic. Images | riya rohewal In Xataka | In January a SpaceX rocket exploded. Today we know the danger that an Iberia plane was in with 450 passengers in the air

NASA captures the unusual trail of the “twin” tornadoes in Mississippi from space

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If we look at the Mississippi from 700 kilometers above sea level, the landscape we usually see is a green carpet of forests and agricultural fields. However, last March this carpet was ‘torn’, as NASA could see through the Landsat 8 satellite. The images obtained revealed something extremely strange: “scars”, which are nothing more than traces of total destruction that reveal the trajectory of one of the most violent tornado outbreaks in the last decade. The surprising thing. It is not the magnitude of the damage that the passage of these could have generated. tornadoes down the Mississippi, but the geometry it has. And in Walthall County, satellites have immortalized an extremely rare phenomenon: two perfectly parallel scars. Something that represents a “mute” testimony of two tornadoes that advanced hand in hand, wreaking chaos. Paths of destruction. The tornado outbreak in question occurred between March 14 and 16, 2025, and the truth is that it will be remembered for how aggressive it was. Specifically, data from NASA’s Earth Observatory and the National Weather Service (NWS) suggest that they were developed a total of 113 tornadoes in just three days, which affected 14 states. But it was precisely in Mississippi where the atmosphere decided to leave a unique visual signature. Landsat images show these two almost parallel tracks, like train tracks, near Tylertown. Your description. The first of these traces indicates that it arose due to the tornado EF4which had a journey of 90 km with estimated winds of 274 km/h. The second trace, which is shorter, but just as destructive, has a distance of 15 km, and was generated by a different tornado that followed an almost identical path. This phenomenon of “twin tornadoes” leaving parallel trails is a statistical rarity that allows meteorologists to study how supercells interact with each other under conditions of extreme instability. An ‘X’ of disaster. Not only were these parallel trails recorded in Mississippi, but in Covington County researchers they found also another quite unusual pattern: two scars that intersect almost at right angles forming a large ‘X’ over a wooded area. As if a great pirate treasure could be found underneath. And it was not a sensor error, since according to the data, two different tornadoes crossed their paths in an interval of just 40 minutes. For families in the area, it was a statistical nightmare: being hit by a natural disaster and, before an hour had passed, watching another large funnel pass through the rubble of what the first one had just destroyed. A violent 2025. This year’s March has certainly shattered weather records with a total of 299 tornadoes in a single month, and experts point to ‘The Girl‘ as responsible for all this. This climate phenomenon has altered the Pacific jet stream over North America, creating a perfect breeding ground for supercells! By moving the humidity of the Gulf of Mexico to the north and encountering very persistent cold air, everything necessary was in place to have a true meteorological war. And it is no wonder, since at least 1,000 homes were damaged by this phenomenon. Its usefulness. Beyond the photography of scars, science seeks to anticipate the disaster. Researchers at NASA Langley Research Center They are using these satellite images and data on cloud patterns to refine prediction models that allow the population to be warned with a little margin (but not much). The objective right now is to gain 10 minutes’ notice of tornado warnings so that the population can be protected. And it is no wonder, since a scenario where an EF4 can erase a neighborhood in seconds, having 600 extra seconds is the difference between life and death for those who find themselves in the path of this scar. Images | POT In Xataka | What is a tornado and how it forms: the perfect recipe for the most destructive phenomenon on the planet

The real reason why Musk, Bezos and Pichai want to build data centers in space: bypass regulation

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The construction of data centers is proliferating so much that although the largest in the world They are in Kolos (Norway), in The Cidatel (United States) and China, you can find them now even in Botorritain the province of Zaragoza. The limit is the sky. Or well, not even that: because Silicon Valley has been put between eyebrows set up data centers in space. And the main big tech companies are making moves to achieve this. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt bought rocket company Relativity Space with that objective. Nvidia has supported the startup Starcloud in its project to launch the first NVIDIA H100 GPU into space a few weeks ago and Elon Musk has even condensed how he would do it in a tweet: “It will be enough to scale the Starlink V3 satellites, which have high-speed laser links.” He when Jeff Bezos slipped it in a prediction at the Italian Tech Week: We will see “giant training clusters” of AI in orbit in the next 10 to 20 years. The moon is a gift from the universe The next question would be “why?”. The reality is that there is no shortage of reasons. AI is a real energy guzzler and as demand does not stop growingspace offers a couple of differential advantages over Earth: almost unlimited energy and free cooling. On the one hand, in space we have a sun-synchronous orbit where solar panels receive energy almost continuously. On the other hand, you can install a radiator so large that the space functions as a kind of ‘infinite heat sink at -270°C’. The enormous amounts of water essential for cooling on Earth would not be needed. Let’s face it, today there are no plans to have data centers in space. But not too far away: University of Central Florida research professor and former NASA member Phil Metzger esteem that perhaps within a decade it could be economically viable. But its viability is so clear that it considers that taking AI servers into space are “the first real business case that will give way to many more“in the face of a future human migration beyond Earth. So for now, they try it on Earth. Consequence: that Donald Trump declare an energy emergency due to the enormous electricity demand expected for the coming years. As the power grid catches up (or tries to), AI companies have decided to move from a passive to a proactive position: Meta is going to become an electricity marketer. xAI by Elon Musk is using gas turbines as energy sources temporary. OpenAI is pushing to the United States government to lend a hand to electricity companies to add 100 gigawatts per year. That figure doesn’t say much, but it is astronomical: what OpenAI is asking for is that The United States built almost an entire Spain (around 145 GWh considering the 129 GW consolidated at the end of 2024 plus the solar and wind deployment of 2025) every year and a half in terms of infrastructure. AI is growing faster than electrical bureaucracy is advancing How could the Trump Administration help? With the eternal bureaucracy. Because on Earth they face great technical challenges, but they also face a legislative wall. To have more energy, the simplest and most immediate step is to build new power plants, but that means successfully going through the tangle of procedures that slow down the process. There is only one small problem: that in the United States depending on technology, it can take five to ten years… if you’re lucky. Interconnection to the grid alone can take six years, successfully overcoming an interconnection queue with more than 2,000 GW in projects who are already in line. Then, up to four years of federal and environmental permits to end in another couple of years for state and local licenses that must come to fruition. ‘Permit Stack’ they call it. And the journey does not end here: they must also avoid andthe citizen movementNot in my backyard‘ (not in my backyard, kind of like “yes, but not in my house”), which has already backed down the Battle Born Solar Project (Nevada), which was going to be the largest solar plant in the United States, or Danskammer gas station (New York), among others. This can delay the operation even further as rights of way must be negotiated with individual owners who may refuse, going through the courts again. The never ending story. To avoid processes NIMBY that last fifteen years or more, companies like OpenAI or Microsoft are buying plants that already exist, such as Three Mile Island, which is going to reopen only for Microsoftinstead of trying to build new ones from scratch. Amazon has also signed infrastructure that is already on the network like the Talen Energy Campus and it has partnered with Dominion Energy and X-energy to develop mini reactors (SMR). SMRs are also Google’s solution, in this case thanks to an agreement with Kairos Power. Everything is to avoid that tangle of ‘Permit stack’ procedures that in practice and according to estimates, makes it is faster to opt for the space route to build a power plant on the old, familiar Earth. At the end of the day for AI companies “The moon is a gift from the universe”, as already Jeff Bezos glimpsed. In Xataka | Musk has created the perfect circle: Tesla’s megabatteries power the AI ​​that will define its next cars In Xataka | Researchers have dismantled the batteries of Tesla and BYD. You already know which one performs better and is much cheaper. Cover | İsmail Enes Ayhan and NASA

data centers in space are a horrible idea

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Artificial intelligence has turned energy into the new technological bottleneck. And faced with that limit, some of the largest companies in the world have begun to look up. To give some examples, Jeff Bezos has spoken of “giant AI clusters orbiting the planet” in a decade or two. Google has experienced with running artificial intelligence calculations on solar-powered satellites. Nvidia supports startups who want to launch GPUs into space. Even OpenAI has tried the purchase of a rocket company to ensure his own path off Earth. The promise is seductive: solar data centers running around the clock, without power grids or cooling towers. The problem is that, when you move from the story to physics, engineering and numbers, the idea begins to break down. Data centers in space. There is a question that surrounds this issue: why do technology companies want to send data centers to space? The motivation at first glance is clear. According to data from the International Energy Agencydata center electricity consumption could double by 2030, driven by the explosion of generative AI. Training and running models like ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude requires massive amounts of electricity and huge volumes of water for cooling. In many places, these projects are already running into local opposition or physical network limits. In this context, space appears as a tempting solution. In certain orbits, solar panels can receive almost constant light, without clouds or night cycles. Besides, as Bezos and other defenders explainthe vacuum of space seems to offer an ideal environment to dissipate heat without resorting to cooling towers or millions of liters of fresh water. According to this argument, space data centers would be more efficient, more sustainable and, over time, even cheaper than terrestrial ones. For some executiveswould not be an eccentricity, but the “natural evolution” of an infrastructure that already began with communications satellites. When engineers raise their hands. Faced with the enthusiasm of corporate statements, several space engineering experts have been much more forceful. In one of the most cited texts on the subjecta former NASA engineer with a PhD in space electronics and direct experience in AI infrastructure at Google sums up his position bluntly: “This is a terrible idea and it doesn’t make any sense.” His criticism is not ideological, but technical. And it starts with the first great myth, the supposed abundance of energy in space. Solar energy is not magic. The largest solar system ever deployed outside of Earth is the International Space Station. According to NASA dataits panels cover about 2,500 square meters and, under ideal conditions, generate between 84 and 120 kilowatts of power, a part of which is used to charge batteries for periods in the shade. to put it in contexta single modern GPU for AI consumes on the order of 700 watts, and in practice around 1 kilowatt when losses and auxiliary systems are taken into account. With those figures, an infrastructure the size of the ISS could barely power a few hundred GPUs. As this engineer explainsa modern data center can house tens or hundreds of thousands of GPUs. Matching that capability would require launching hundreds of structures the size—and complexity—of the International Space Station. And even then, each would be equivalent to just a few racks of terrestrial servers. Furthermore, the nuclear alternative does not solve the problem either since the nuclear generators used in space, RTGs, produce between 50 and 150 watts. In other words, not even enough to power a single GPU. Space is not a refrigerator. The second big argument against orbital data centers is cooling. It is frequently repeated that the space is cold, and that this would make it easier to dissipate heat from the servers. According to engineers, this is one of the most misleading ideas in the entire debate. On Earth, cooling is based on convection: air or water carries away heat. In the vacuum of space, convection does not exist. All heat must be removed by radiation, a much less efficient process that requires enormous surfaces. NASA itself offers a compelling examplethe active thermal control system of the International Space Station. It is an extremely complex network of ammonia circuits, pumps, exchangers and giant radiators. And even so, its dissipation capacity is in the order of tens of kilowatts. According to the calculations of the aforementioned engineercooling the heat generated by high-performance GPUs in space would require radiators even larger than the solar panels that power them. The result would be a colossal satellite, larger and more complex than the ISS, to carry out a task that is solved much more simply on Earth. And there is a third factor: radiation. In orbit, electronics are exposed to charged particles that can cause bit errors, unexpected reboots, or permanent damage to chips. Although some tests, such as those carried out by Google with its TPUs, show that certain components can withstand high doses, the failures do not disappear, they only multiply. Shielding systems reduces risk, but adds mass. And each extra kilo increases the cost of the launch. Furthermore, AI hardware has a very short lifespan, as it becomes obsolete within a few years. On Earth it is replaced; In space, no. As critics point outan orbital data center would have to operate for many years to amortize its cost, but it would do so with hardware that is left behind much sooner. So why do they keep insisting? The answer seems to lie less in current engineering and more in long-term strategy. All of these projects depend on the condition that launch costs fall drastically. Some estimatesthey talk about thresholds of about 200 dollars per kilo so that space data centers can compete economically with terrestrial ones. That scenario relies on fully reusable rockets like Starship, which have not yet demonstrated that capability on an operational scale. Meanwhile, terrestrial renewable energies they continue to get cheaperand storage systems They improve year after year. Furthermore, the story of the space fulfills another function because it positions … Read more

Welding in space is a physical nightmare, but the UK has a good reason to try it

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We have entered a point where great nations have one objective: spatial autonomy. And, although many factors come into play, one of the most important is the ability to manufacture and assemble in space. As? Welding directly in space, but although we have seen it in science fiction on numerous occasions, things get complicated when we want to apply it to the real world. Now, a British university believes it has found the solution. A ‘Wall-e‘ welder. Nightmare. Soldering on Earth is an extremely simple process. We only have to apply a very high temperature and both gravity and the atmosphere make it easy for us. In space, the thing changesturning something routine into a real physical nightmare. There are three elements that come into play: Microgravity: on Earth, gravity causes the drop of the binding metal (tin, for example) to fall on the elements to be joined. In space, since there is no gravity, surface tension is the dominant source: the molten metal does not stay in place, but tends to form spheres. Additionally, gas does not escape from the molten metal, causing porosities and further structural weakness. Pressure: There is no oxidation because there is no oxygen, but there is also no pressure, which lowers the boiling point of certain alloys. This can cause, at certain temperatures, some critical components of the metal to evaporate rather than melt. Again: the chemistry of the solder and the properties of the joint are altered. The politics of discard. If that were not enough, welding in space is a nightmare for astronauts who have suits that limit their movements and who would always be under the pressure of a spark or slag piercing the suit. Goodbye astronaut. That is why administrations have become accustomed to the logistics of disposal: rather than repairing something, it is better to throw it away and launch something new from Earth. Less risks, fewer headaches. ISPARK. Clearly, it clashes with the most current policy: that of recycling. A few days ago we saw that, while NASA wants to throw down the International Space Station to the trash, there are those who want to recycle it to take advantage of all the elements it has. And building platforms in space based on smaller parts is more reasonable than launching those pre-assembled structures from Earth. That’s where the discovery from the University of Leicester, in the United Kingdom. In collaboration with TWI Ltd, they have launched what they have called “ISPARK Project”, or “Intelligent SPace Arc-welding Robotic Kit”. It is not a new physical welding, but a robot to do the work. There are still issues that can compromise the integrity of the weld itself, but having a robot do the job eliminates the extreme risk for astronauts. And, precisely, the researchers point out that achieving this “will redefine how large structures are built and maintained in orbit” in the new era of the space economy. They are not the only ones, since companies like ThinkOrbital wave University of Texas they are also pushing this possibility. Roadmap. It must be clarified that it is a technology that has to be tested. The first step will be to subject the robotic system to tests in chambers that simulate the vacuum of space to verify both that the electric arc and that the behavior of the materials are stable in an environment without an atmosphere. In addition to the direct results, they will compare with a digital twin. It is a technology that virtualizes (thanks to computer calculations) the physics of welding in vacuum and microgravity. It is data with which they will train the robot, but also with which they will compare the results of the physical world. And, if everything goes well, in later phases the objective is to test it in orbital reality conditions. This is where other factors come into play such as radiation or dynamic thermal cycles (conditions of extreme cold and heat in a matter of an instant). In search of autonomy. Little joke with this. The “Smart Space Arc Welding Robotic Kit” has received funding through the UK Space Agency’s National Space Innovation Programme. Specifically, 560,000 pounds to develop this system. Everything is framed within a larger program of the Agency, which will allocate 17 million pounds to 17 space innovation projects. If we look at the global European “photo”, it is contextualized within a reality in which we also see that the European Space Agency seeks one thing: autonomy. The British agency and the ESA are tired of depending on NASA either Roscosmos for their space missions, and we are seeing how they develop technologies or inject more than 900 million euros to find a European replacement for SpaceX. And, obviously, assembling and fixing in space is much more sustainable than continuing to create technology that costs hundreds of millions of euros and is disposable. Images | University of Leicester In Xataka | We are launching more things into space than ever before. And the next problem is already on the table: how to pollute less

In 1919 the Germans decided to sink their entire fleet in the North Sea. The steel from those ships ended up in space

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At 11:20 in the morning of June 21, 1919, Admiral von Reuter’s ship began to signal to the rest of the German ships in Scapa Flow Bay, England. The taps and water intakes were opened, the pipes were destroyed, the portholes were dismantled: no one noticed anything. Until around midday, the Friederich Der Grosse began to list to starboard. It was already late, the German flag was flying from the 74 masts. Scapa Flow. The image tells the story of Scapa Flowthe sinking of the German fleet immediately after World War I. While the Allies negotiated the terms of the Armistice with Germany, the fleet was held captive and stationed off the British coast. Von Reuter feared that the Allies would divide up the ships, so he decided to sink it completely, at any cost. The British naval ships that were on maneuvers arrived at 2:30 p.m. and were only able to save one ship. The last to sink was the battlecruiser Hindenburg. Nine Germans were killed, 16 were wounded, 1,774 were detained. 52 ships were sunk on June 21 at Scapa Flow. But they are no longer there: they are on the Moon, Jupiter and beyond the orbit of Pluto. steel is steel. A tough guy, with bad temper and few words. But in 1945 (or a little before), everything changed. We didn’t realize it at first, but we quickly discovered that although all steels are equal, there are some steels that are more equal than others. I’m not going around the bush: what happened in ’45 was the atomic bomb, the device of the Devil that made us change geological era. The problem. Since the first atomic bombs exploded on the Earth’s surface, the air contains traces of radioactive elements. They are there, dissolved in it, but the amount is so small that they are harmless. Unless for some strange reason you have to blow in enormous amounts of air in the manufacturing process of some material. It’s almost useless to us. That is, all steel manufactured after the explosion of the first atomic bomb is radioactive. Very little, almost nothing. But enough so that some medical, physical or astronomical instruments do not work correctly. For example, radioactivity monitoring systems used by spacecraft. He tells it David Bodanis in “E = mc². Biography of the most famous equation in the world“, a book that, although it has become somewhat outdated, is still a delight. You may have heard the story, but it is a good story. Steel = expensive. In the book, Bodanis explains that, faced with this problem, uncontaminated steel became very expensive. Above all, because before ’45 we did not make steel in quantities so industrial as now. I imagine dozens of NASA engineers rummaging through their family’s cutlery so they can send reliable machines into space. Until someone remembered Kaiser Wilhelm’s ships. The peculiarity of Scapa Flow. There are sunken ships in many places, but there are not many shallow inlets with 52 sunken ships in their waters. Not all of them were there, but a few were enough for us to manufacture the equipment that the Apollo mission left on the lunar surface, that which the Galileo probe took to Jupiter, and that which the Pioneer probe is taking even further. The evil, the sea. In Xataka | Quantum find in Cambridge points to solar ‘Holy Grail’: single-material solar panels In Xataka | The Atacama salt flat is the key on which the electric car industry pivots. And it’s starting to dry

China is launching more rockets into space than ever before. And the reason is very simple: not to depend on Starlink

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China has taken the lead in a disputed area: that of space sovereignty. To talk about space is to think directly about the POTbut the photo has changed in recent years. The space race It is no longer just a matter of government agencies, but also of private companies as SpaceXthe Spanish PLD Space either Blue Origin. Europe seeks its space without depending on anyone and countries like China and India are taking steps to expand your borders by looking into space. And, earlier this month, China complete four space missions. It is a clear blow to the United States. Rhythm. 2025 has marked a turning point in China’s aerospace industry. The country has broke his record of launches with more than 80 orbitals throughout the year (it was on 68 launches), adding the one with three Long March rockets taking off less than 19 hours apart. Something like this is within the reach of very few. Specifically, only within the reach of SpaceX in terms of pace. stress test. The litmus test took place at the beginning of December, when the Chinese space agency carried out a stress test on its system. Between the 5th and 9th of this month, China overloaded its entire launch chain. They used four different launch sites to test the extent to which their launch, logistics and telemetry centers could operate in good conditions. With this, the country wanted to check to what extent its different centers can operate almost in parallel, without interference and without hindering each other. This is key for routine launches of mega satellite constellations, but also for rapid responses during a crisis. It is also a trial by fire to see how optimized the process is in which the rockets can spend the shortest time possible at the launch points, without forming bottlenecks. What do they throw?. For this operation, four ports were mobilized: Hainan, Taiyuan, Xichang and Jiuquan. And what they have put in the space is… a little of everything: Mission 1: A Kuaizhou-1A rapid-deploy rocket launched from Jiuquan. In the cargo there were VDES satellites to identify ships and their purpose is dual: to monitor maritime traffic, but also to have an analytical capacity for data on the high seas. Mission 2: a Long March 8A rocket designed for a high rate of launches that started from Hainan. It carried 14 Guowang satellites, the state’s answer to Starlink. This is also the most strategicsince the Long March 8A is designed to compete directly against Starlink’s Falcon 9 in costs and launch rate. Mission 3: another Long March, 6A. It left Taiyuan without a confirmed payload, although it is a rocket that has previously been used to launch more Guowang satellites into orbit. Mission 4: a Long March 4B that took off from Jiuquan and is the most “military” of all. Launched Yaogan-47, a satellite recognition to “census lands and estimate crops.” It is still a remote sensing satellite, and we are in a very complex moment in the Pacific. CAS Space The fear of Starlink. One of China’s goals is to have its own Starlink system. This involves thousands of satellites orbiting and providing service, something that cannot be launched in one go. This intense four-day campaign puts on the table the logistical capacity of the Chinese space agency to be able to launch many launches in a short space of time without jeopardizing their reliability. It is a movement that will allow climb the launch of thousands of Guowang satellites into orbit and, when we talk about “fear” of Starlink, we mean that China wants to occupy the orbital space before it runs out of chairs. It is estimated that Starlink has more than 6,000 satellites circling and another 42,000 planned. China has 25,000 planned between Guowang and G60, but in space the law of “first come, first served” applies. The International Telecommunications Union assigns orbits and frequencies under this principle, so China does not want to fall behind the West. Specifically, against the United States. Sovereignty. In fact, there is an interesting “prick” with Musk’s satellites that has nothing to do with communication. Starlink has already demonstrated its usefulness in the war context (andn the war in Ukraine, for example), but also, in 2021 Tiangong space station had to maneuver twice to avoid satellites starlink. And we already know that Russia, China and the United States are preparing (and according to the United States, more than just preparing) for a war in space. In the end, it is a matter of spatial sovereignty. The United States is the proper name when we think about space, but China has been strengthening its position for decades and more recently has begun to occupy that space. And from the European Union it is alsoe is testing the ground for that spatial sovereignty. The goal of all agencies and governments is the same: not to depend on external technology. And this stress test by China when it comes to launching is a blow to its biggest rival. Image | CAS Space, Galactic Energy In Xataka | After many years trying to copy the Falcon 9, Elon Musk believes there is a company about to achieve it

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