Commercial NAND flash used in consumer SSDs relies on charge-trap technologies that are highly vulnerable to radiation.

Modern AI accelerators rely on High Bandwidth Memory that uses dense interposers, 3D-stacked dies, and aggressive operating voltages, which increase susceptibility to radiation.

Launching ten tons of shrink-wrapped commercial SSDs could theoretically deliver an exabyte-scale training dataset for about $200 per kilogram in the Starship era.

Placing one million satellites in shells as high as 2,000 km risks creating long-lived debris because debris at 2,000 km experiences negligible atmospheric drag and can remain for millennia.

In a high-performance computing experiment on the International Space Station, 11 of 20 commercial SSDs failed within the first year of flight.

Monolithic orbital data centers are conceived as a small number of very large, pressurized spacecraft using active cooling pumps, fluid loops, and heat exchangers to move waste heat to radiators.

The simulated Artemis 2 launch window is scheduled to open at 9:00 p.m. EST.

Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, NASA’s Artemis launch director, polled the management team and authorized the start of tanking operations during a weather briefing.

Technicians are replacing the ambient air in the SLS and Orion crew module with gaseous nitrogen (GN2) to remove oxygen and reduce flammability risks.

A 2-hour 15-minute built-in countdown hold is scheduled between L-11H35M and L-9H20M.

The countdown clock for the wet dress rehearsal began on Saturday, January 31 at 8:13 p.m. EST, which was 48 hours and 40 minutes before the simulated launch window opening.

The GN2 inerting purge on SLS and Orion removes oxygen and prevents contaminants like moisture and particulates from entering sensitive vehicle systems.

Kennedy Space Center reports indicate the countdown clock resumed from a pre-planned hold after the go for tanking was given around 10:45 a.m. EST.

Gaseous nitrogen displaces oxygen and is hazardous for humans to breathe, so all personnel cleared the area during inerting operations.

At L-49 hours 15 minutes the launch team arrives on their stations and the countdown begins.

The Artemis 2 wet dress rehearsal is expected to continue until approximately 1:00 a.m. on Feb. 3.

During planned holds in the countdown, the countdown clock and T-minus time stop while the L-minus time continues to advance.

The launch team can hold the countdown at T-6 minutes for the duration of the launch window without recycling back to T-10.

If the countdown is stopped between T-6 minutes and T-1 minute 30 seconds, teams can hold for up to 3 minutes and then resume the clock; requiring more than 3 minutes of hold time causes a recycle back to T-10.

The air-to-gaseous nitrogen changeover and vehicle cavity inerting is scheduled between L-13H15M and L-11H05M.

In NASA countdown terminology, L minus indicates time remaining to liftoff in hours and minutes and T minus indicates a sequence of events built into the countdown.

Flexible access beyond cis-lunar (Earth–Moon) space is limited.

Pale Blue will enter a new business line to provide orbital transfer vehicles (OTVs).

On January 30, Pale Blue was selected by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Space Strategy Fund for the technical development theme “Realizing free movement in space (A): Development of an orbital transfer vehicle.”

Pale Blue aims to provide pinpoint transport to diverse orbits using ultra-small OTVs to address transport needs that large-scale launch transportation cannot fully satisfy.

Pale Blue will begin development of an ultra-small inter-orbit transfer vehicle in partnership with the University of Tokyo.

Pale Blue develops propulsion systems for ultra-small satellites.

An orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) is a spacecraft that, after launch on a rocket, moves between different orbits to transport satellites, probes, and other payloads to their target orbits.

The RFI represents an effort to transition laser communication from experimental demonstrations to an operational multi-domain capability.

The Space Development Agency is specifically interested in Optical Communication Terminals that can be rapidly demonstrated within a 12-month timeframe and that are compatible with the SDA’s established OCT standards.

The RFI seeks industry solutions to integrate military aircraft directly into the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture.

The Space Development Agency targets a potential initial operational capability for airborne optical links as early as 2027.

Airborne optical links will allow drones, intelligence-gathering aircraft, and command-and-control platforms to downlink massive volumes of sensor data in real time.

In August 2025 the Space Development Agency, in partnership with General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems and Kepler Communications, established a bi-directional optical link between a commercial satellite and an airborne terminal.

Optical links have a significantly smaller illuminated footprint than radio frequency links, providing low probability of detection and low probability of interception properties.

The Space Development Agency published a Request for Information for airborne optical communication terminals on January 28, 2026.

Connecting aircraft directly to the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture is intended to solve the bandwidth bottleneck for data-intensive military missions.

The Space Development Agency aims to normalize airborne optical link capability across its Tranche 2 and Tranche 3 satellite deployments.

The August 2025 proof-of-concept demonstration showed that optical links could maintain high-bandwidth stability despite atmospheric turbulence.

Optical communications use modulated infrared light to transmit data at rates 10 to 40 times higher than traditional radio frequency systems.

The Space Development Agency identified key technical areas for OCT development in the RFI.

Industry responses to the Space Development Agency RFI are due by 5:00 p.m. ET on February 27, 2026.

PLD Space is headquartered in Elche, Spain.

Miura 5, PLD Space’s most ambitious launcher project, has entered the integration and accelerated qualification phase.

The Miura 5 thrust section was tested at 120% of the maximum predicted load spectrum and produced 1.2 meganewtons during the test.

PLD Space received a €169 million contract from the European Space Agency in the fourth quarter of 2025 to develop the next version of the Miura 5 launch vehicle.

Miura 1 was launched in 2023 from Huelva, Spain.

Giovanni Luca Carollo is the Miura 5 Program Manager at PLD Space.

The Miura 5 fuel tank has passed more than 150 internal pressure and compression tests to validate reuse capability.

The integrated stages of the Miura 5 are ready to be transported to Teruel for system-level testing.