The New Age Space Race Is Well Underway

Godspeed Godspeed

3 weeks ago

4 MIN READ

Welcome

Happy Saturday, everyone. Welcome to The Godspeed Weekly!

Let’s dive in.

Curiosity Discovers Large Organic Molecules on Mars

In 2013, NASA’s Curiosity rover collected samples leading to the discovery of small organic molecules on Mars.

This week, scientists discovered the largest organic compounds, suggesting prebiotic chemistry may have advanced further than previously observed. The fatty acids found are just another clue to the Red Planet’s past.

Scientists hope the discovery will accelerate plans to return the samples to Earth for further analysis.

If your heading is spinning, I understand. My head is spinning. We’re talking organic chemistry and space exploration. It’s literally rocket science.

Thankfully, NASA shared a great 90-second video for us mere Earthlings.

Building A Resilient US-Based Space Industry

Rocket Lab and Stoke Space will join Blue Origin, SpaceX, and United Launch Alliance (ULA) in the Department of Defense’s (DoD) National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 Lane 1 program.

The expansion speaks to the DoD’s commitment to a resilient US-based space industry.

This indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract provides Rocket Lab and Stoke Space with $5M and permits bidding on launch service orders through 2029. 30 missions are expected to be awarded. A total of ~$5.6B in task orders is up for grabs.

As of today, Rocket Lab and Stoke Space’s reusable rockets are still in development.

Neutron (Rocket Lab) is scheduled to launch in the second half of 2025.

Nova (Stoke Space) is also expected to launch in 2025; however, no specific date has been confirmed.

Folks – the New Age Space Race is well underway!

Advanced Air Mobility In Osaka

Expo 2025 is just around the corner. The 6-month World’s Fair, held every 5 years, presents an opportunity for nations and organizations to share and exchange new ideas.

This year, the Expo will be held on Japan’s artificial island, Yumeshimanaka, located just outside Osaka.

The theme is Designing Future Society for Our Lives, and it’s clear – flying cars are the future.

On March 28th, Osaka Metro unveiled the Osakako Veriport, designed to conduct demonstrations at this year’s event.

eVTOL manufacturers — SkyDrive, EHang, LIFT Aircraft, and Joby Aviation are all expected to participate.

The expo will open its doors on April 13th and anticipates more than 28M visitors. The world is watching for a glimpse at what’s to come. I’ll share additional details as the event unfolds.

Until then, here’s a teaser of what we can expect.

Making Sense of LLMs

To the end user, LLMs are magic. We open ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude and have access to virtually whatever we want. But how does an LLM actually work?

Anthropic answers this question.

The company published two whitepapers detailing the inner workings of its LLM. The first reveals how Claude processes language internally. The second tracks Claude 3.5 Haiku’s behavior across 10 representative tasks.

These papers are in-depth, highly complex. I suggest you kindly request an LLM to summarize. 😉