Airbus UpNext SpaceRAN is intended to help prepare the next generation of wireless technology (6G) and eventually drive down the cost of orbital data transmission.

Airbus UpNext SpaceRAN aims to open the door to user-to-user direct connectivity via in-orbit processing.

Airbus UpNext SpaceRAN frames 5G NTN as a versatile connectivity technology compatible with all types of business applications.

Airbus UpNext launched a demonstrator called Airbus UpNext SpaceRAN into orbit.

Airbus assembled a consortium for the SpaceRAN demonstrator that includes Aalyria, AccelerComm, CesiumAstro, Deutsche Telekom, Eutelsat, the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), Keysight Technologies, Onati, Radisys, Sener, and ST Engineering iDirect.

The demonstrator will process data directly in space rather than simply relaying it to reduce latency, maximize data throughput, and enable more efficient network management and routing.

Airbus UpNext SpaceRAN is a demonstrator to explore advanced 5G Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) capabilities for standardized global connectivity.

Airbus UpNext SpaceRAN aims to enable standardized, interoperable, and globally available connectivity for commercial, defense, and governmental use.

Airbus UpNext SpaceRAN will leverage Airbus’ software-defined satellite capabilities to manage and optimize 5G signals in orbit.

Airbus UpNext SpaceRAN aims to support commercial aviation by boosting operational efficiency, simplifying interoperability, and enabling enhanced passenger experiences.

Caidin wrote a novel about the Soviets beating the United States to the Moon and a novel titled Four Came Back about a space station.

Caidin's 1964 novel Marooned was adapted into a 1969 movie of the same name.

Caidin helped write autobiographies including cosmonaut Gherman Titov's I Am Eagle! and Saburo Sakai's Samurai!.

Martin Caidin bought and restored a 1936 Junkers Ju 52 transport airplane and named it Iron Annie.

Martin Caidin judged a space station to be scientifically valuable but not militarily useful.

In November 1981, 19 people walked on one of Iron Annie's wings while Martin Caidin was flying the plane, setting a world record.

Martin Caidin lived near Cape Canaveral and wrote books about astronauts and pilots.

Caidin wrote the mid-1950s books Jets, Rockets and Guided Missiles and Rockets Beyond the Earth.

Lufthansa continues to fly the former Iron Annie for special flights.

In 1975 Martin Caidin published a Bermuda Triangle novel titled Three Corners To Nowhere.

Caidin wrote the movie novelization for The Final Countdown, a story about the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz traveling back in time to just before the Pearl Harbor attack.

Caidin revised his earlier novel as a movie novelization that shifted the original Mercury-era focus to the Apollo program.

Caidin wrote reference and popular books titled the Man-In-Space Dictionary, Man Into Space, Vanguard!, Spaceport U.S.A., and Rendezvous in Space.

In 1961 Martin Caidin was one of the pilots in a formation flight of B-17s across the Atlantic Ocean and turned the experience into the book Everything But the Flak.

Caidin wrote the 1972 novel Cyborg, which formed the basis of The Six Million Dollar Man television franchise.

Martin Caidin claimed to have telekinetic powers and asserted that he could move objects with his mind.

Caidin wrote several World War II aviation books including Flying Forts, Thunderbolt!, and Fork-Tailed Devil: The P-38.

In the mid-1980s Martin Caidin hosted a confrontational television talk show that featured far-right figures including leaders of the Jewish Defense League and the American Nazi Party.

Martin Caidin was born in 1927 and died of thyroid cancer in 1997 at the age of 69.

Caidin wrote a novel about a supercomputer artificial intelligence that seeks to take over the planet.

Throughout the 1960s Caidin wrote primarily non-fiction books about airplanes and also expanded into fiction about spaceflight.

Martin Caidin sold Iron Annie to Lufthansa in 1984, and Lufthansa renamed the plane Tempelhof.

Martin Caidin published Worlds in Space in 1954, a book that proposed a future with a space station, a Moon colony, and journeys to the planets.

One of Martin Caidin's novels was Exit Earth, which concerned a space ark leaving the Earth.

Martin Caidin wrote more than 50 fiction and non-fiction books and more than 1,000 magazine articles during his lifetime.

The Sands Space History Museum just outside the gate of Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida has a small exhibit devoted primarily to Martin Caidin's works.

Martin Caidin worked as a pilot for movies and used his pilot connections to spend time in military aircraft.

Martin Caidin wrote a book about the C-130 Hercules.

Caidin wrote three sequels to Cyborg titled Operation Nuke, High Crystal, and Cyborg IV.

Caidin wrote Buck Rogers: A Life in the Future and an Indiana Jones tie-in novel.

Caidin wrote a 1970s novel titled The Cape that featured terrorists blowing up a Saturn V rocket inside the Vehicle Assembly Building in its plot.

Martin Caidin was survived by a wife, two daughters, and three grandchildren.

Near-peer adversaries are advancing autonomous space capabilities and adopting maneuver tactics that evolve in real time.

The U.S. Space Force awarded a $27 million contract to Slingshot Aerospace to modernize scenario training activities.

The U.S. Space Force’s Space Training and Readiness Command tested TALOS to explore its potential as a force multiplier in training.

Slingshot Aerospace is building TALOS and supporting infrastructure to integrate with complementary training systems, data sources, and AI capabilities across the Space Force.

The 18-month contract builds on earlier SpaceWERX and Space Force investments in 2022 under a $25 million STRATFI contract.

TALOS was built with Slingshot Aerospace’s behavior cloning pipeline to learn and replicate real-world spacecraft tactics within an evolving orbital environment.

Slingshot Aerospace will advance the Space Force’s Operational Test and Training Infrastructure (OTTI) program toward integrating existing training enterprise capabilities with AI-native technology.

Launched in July, TALOS AI is an autonomous, AI-powered agent that imitates satellite behavior for training and simulation.