Space
Space technology explained: satellites, orbital infrastructure, exploration and in-space manufacturing, with the engineering and economics behind them.
Space
+10
Sep 25, 2026
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7 min read
A Brooklyn Startup Flew Its Space Robot Through 66 Parabolas
Icarus Robotics took JOY into repeated weightlessness to test the part simulators struggle with: when a robot reaches for an object in microgravity, the robot itself moves. The next stop is meant to be the International Space Station in 2027.
Space
+6
Aug 31, 2026
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5 min read
The Satellite Shaped Like a Dinner Plate
Small satellites have been built as cubes for twenty years, not for any reason to do with spaceflight but because that is the shape of the dispenser that pushes them out of the rocket. Four spacecraft shaped like dinner plates, a metre across and 2.5 centimetres deep, have now spent six months in orbit testing the alternative. The prize is very low orbit, where cameras see more and signals travel faster. Here is why shape decides who gets there.
Space
+8
Aug 23, 2026
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2 min read
The Frontier Week Ahead: Six Deep Dives, One a Day
Six days, six long-reads from the frontier, plus a featured story on orbital surveillance going mass-market. A quantum sensor that can touch a patient, gene editing reaching a cell it never could, and two bodies flown around the Moon.
Space
+7
Aug 17, 2026
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5 min read
We Said Orbit Would Become a Drug Factory. India Just Joined the Race.
Two weeks ago we explained why orbit is becoming a drug factory. Now India has entered the race: a Bhubaneswar startup crystallized a pharmaceutical at the edge of space and recovered it intact, while a wave of Indian space-manufacturing money starts to flow. Here is what we said then, what just happened, and why it matters more than it looks.
Space
+8
Aug 16, 2026
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2 min read
The Frontier Week Ahead: Six Deep Dives, One a Day
Next week on The Signal: a quantum internet, living-bacteria implants, drones that navigate by ear, AI-run cyberattacks, disposable satellites, and a salt battery, plus a featured read on where vertical-AI money is flowing.
Space
+10
Aug 10, 2026
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7 min read
Seven Stars Looked Like Alien Megastructures. JWST Just Ruled Out Two
Astronomers just proved they can tell a fake alien megastructure from a real one. The bigger story is the fleet of new machines arriving now, from a telescope that films the entire sky to a future observatory built to photograph other Earths, that will turn a slow, careful hunt into an industrial-scale search for a civilization's fingerprints.
Space
+8
Aug 9, 2026
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3 min read
The Frontier Week Ahead: Six Deep Dives, One a Day
Alien megastructures, a quantum computer that runs on light, a battery that rusts on purpose, and a living robot. Your first look at next week.
Space
+3
Aug 4, 2026
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4 min read
Why Pharma Is Sending "Mini-Factories" Into Orbit
A factory the size of a mini-fridge is orbiting Earth, processing pharmaceutical crystals in microgravity and returning them by capsule. Orbit is turning from a laboratory into a supply chain.
Space
+14
Jul 25, 2026
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5 min read
NASA Is Building a Telescope the Size of a City Out of Six Shoeboxes
NASA's SunRISE flies six toaster-oven satellites in tight formation so they behave as one radio telescope kilometres wide, built to map where on the Sun the biggest particle storms are launched, the space weather that can threaten satellites, power grids and astronauts.
Space
+8
Jul 19, 2026
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2 min read
The Week Ahead: Six More Deep Dives, One a Day
Six deep dives, one a day, Monday to Saturday. Here is your first taste of each.
Space
+10
Jul 17, 2026
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5 min read
It's the Size of a Softball and Runs for 20 Years Without the Sun
City Labs' BOHR is the first commercially built nuclear-powered satellite ever launched. It is the size of a softball, makes less power than a wristwatch, and is not powering the spacecraft. The reasons it still matters have nothing to do with wattage.
Space
+8
Jul 12, 2026
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2 min read
The Frontier Week Ahead: Six More Deep Dives, One a Day
Mind-reading AI, a chip that writes DNA, one free download that drives 20 robots, and the signal holding up civilisation. Six deep dives, one a day, Monday to Saturday.
Space
+8
Jul 5, 2026
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2 min read
The Frontier Week Ahead: Six Deep Dives, One a Day
Six spoilers- for next week's deep dives, one a day, Monday to Saturday.
Space
+9
Jul 3, 2026
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6 min read
AI Can Now Spot Cancer Years Before You'd Feel It
Plus: China's eerily lifelike humanoid, why bosses say data (not models) is the moat against LLMs, Russia's $60B bid to become SpaceX, home batteries turned power plants, and the Pentagon's encryption countdown.
Space
+22
Jul 1, 2026
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8 min read
The Future of Video Editing? Tell Google's AI What to Change — and It Does It
Plus: a humanoid robot pulls a multi-day shift, a monthly shot that silences a gene, a battery made of CO2, NASA's private cargo run to the Moon, and a quantum computer that fits in a server rack.
SMR
+23
Jun 30, 2026
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8 min read
A Robot Tow-Truck Launches Today to Save a Falling NASA Telescope
Plus: NVIDIA hands AI agents a real science lab, robots learn from video games, a world-first cell therapy cracks a solid tumour, a walk-away-safe reactor finds a grid partner, and an AI designs quantum codes humans couldn't.
Space
+18
Jun 26, 2026
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10 min read
The Signal — America's quantum moonshot, and the quiet race to lock your data first
A US executive order pours the government into quantum computing — and braces for the day it breaks today's encryption. Plus five more signals from the frontier.
