Launched in 1976, LAGEOS-1 (LAser GEOdynamic Satellite) is unusual in that it contains no instrumentation, no electronics, no power supply, and no means of propulsion. It’s spherical, weighs just under 407 kg, and looks a bit like a disco ball. It may not be accurate to say it does nothing, but unlike most satellites its role is entirely passive. It’s also one of the oldest scientific satellites still in service.
The lens-like objects covering the surface of LAGEOS-1 are corner cube retroreflectors, which have the nifty effect of always reflecting incident light right back towards its source.
Ground stations fire short laser pulses at it and measure the time it takes for the light to return, a form of time-of-flight ranging. Since LAGEOS-1’s orbit is highly stable, it provides a reliable reference point for measuring even tiny changes in the Earth itself. The size, shape, rotation, and more of our planet can be measured as a result. LAGEOS data (LAGEOS-2 was launched in 1992) has also been used in tests of general relativity.
Its orbit and construction were deliberately chosen so that atmospheric drag and other disturbances would be minimal. The simple, maintenance-free design combined with an extraordinarily stable orbit means LAGEOS is expected to circle our world for millions of years to come.
LAGEOS-1 also contains a message to the future in the form of two identical plaques prepared by Dr. Carl Sagan just in case there’s anyone around to find it some day. Check out the short 1975 video from NASA, embedded just below.
NASA has released a document that provides some initial details about the proposed United States Space Academy, and it's clear that the space agency wants to move quickly in establishing the institution.
According to the document's timeline, NASA seeks a groundbreaking for a permanent campus no later than next year, the first class to be enrolled and begin studies in temporary facilities in 2028, and a transition to a permanent campus in 2031.
The European Space Agency is moving "full steam ahead" with development of a robotic mission to Venus after NASA officials determined they were unlikely to fulfill a commitment to provide a US-built radar instrument for the spacecraft, the mission's project scientist said.
The European orbiter, named Envision, will map the Venusian surface at 10 times higher resolution than the last radar mission sent to Venus by NASA in the 1990s. The planet is enshrouded in a blanket of thick clouds of sulfuric acid, rendering its mysterious surface unseen by optical cameras in orbit. Radar is the most effective way to penetrate the clouds of Venus to reveal the terrain below, and scientists will use Envision to look for signs of active volcanism.
NASA and ESA signed a memorandum of understanding in 2024 outlining their partnership on Envision. NASA agreed to supply a US-made synthetic aperture radar instrument, Envision's primary means of mapping the surface of Venus, along with providing tracking and communications support through NASA's Deep Space Network. In exchange, ESA would include US researchers on Envision's science team. Europe would build the Envision spacecraft and the rest of its science instruments and provide the launch on an Ariane 6 rocket.
The commander and pilot of NASA's Artemis II mission have gained a new distinction five months after splashing down from the Moon: They're not fully retiring from the space agency.
Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover are the first astronauts to join NASA's emeritus program, enabling them to continue to support the work being done at Johnson Space Center in Houston. They will remain available to train and mentor the current workforce while still being able to pursue employment and opportunities outside of NASA.
"I have asked NASA ... to not use the term 'retire' as much, but technically emeritus is a retirement program," Glover told collectSPACE.com on Wednesday. "It's something we have typically done for scientists when they have groundbreaking research, and they want to go back to academia to teach or to research and publish."
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman addresses hundreds of Rocketdyne employees during his stopover at the company’s facility in Redmond, Wash. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)
REDMOND, Wash. — NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman came to Rocketdyne’s facility here today to give a pep talk to the space company’s employees — and lay out his vision for the future of America’s space effort.
Isaacman made clear that nuclear power will be a big part of that vision.
“NASA is at our best when we’re doing the near-impossible,” he said. “There is no obvious revenue model or business case for what we’re doing. We’re just out there pursuing the secrets of the universe, and nuclear or fission-powered spacecraft make sense in that it helps us extend our reach farther into the solar system.”
The pathfinder mission for NASA’s nuclear ambitions is likely to be SR-1 Freedom, a Mars probe that’s scheduled for launch in 2028. SR-1 Freedom is designed to carry a fission reactor and nuclear electric propulsion system.
Rocketdyne’s Redmond facility is working on thrusters for the system. “We built here, in Redmond, the Advanced Electric Propulsion System,” Rocketdyne CEO Kristin Houston told GeekWire before Isaacman’s talk. “It’s a 12-kilowatt Hall-thruster system, and that is going to be the propulsion element on the SR-1 Freedom. So, yeah, we’re really proud of that.”
Today’s visit was part of the Pacific Northwest leg of Isaacman’s nationwide “Inspiration Tour,” aimed at strengthening the connections between NASA and its partners. A similar tour in August brought Isaacman to Idaho National Laboratory, which will play a key role in providing the 20-kilowatt reactor for SR-1 Freedom.
Rocketdyne CEO Kristin Houston delivers remarks during NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman’s stop at the company’s Redmond facility. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)
In partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy, NASA is also looking into the prospects for putting a nuclear reactor on the lunar surface by 2030 as part of its Moon Base initiative. Houston said Rocketdyne is interested in playing a part in that program.
“That’s not as much out of the Redmond site, but as Rocketdyne, we’re doing a lot of investment in the power conversion and the power management and distribution design that could be used for that,” she said.
Over the course of nearly 60 years, Rocketdyne’s Redmond site has played a role in nearly every interplanetary NASA mission — and has gone through several ownership changes along the way. The company’s latest transition, including its rebranding as Rocketdyne, became official last month after AE Industrial Partners acquired a majority stake from L3Harris.
Nowadays, Rocketdyne is arguably best-known as one of the commercial partners in NASA’s Artemis moon program. “We have 21 engines on the Orion spacecraft,” Houston said. “That’s between the crew module and the service module … all built in Redmond.”
The Redmond facility oversees the refurbishment of space shuttle engines for upcoming Artemis missions and is redesigning the spacecraft’s Orion Main Engine for missions starting with Artemis 7. “Our in-space propulsion business, really based here, has the lead on the entire OME program,” Houston said. “So we’re already concurrently doing the design and test of the new engine while doing all the refurbishment.”
Isaacman said the Artemis program is one of NASA’s top priorities, in part due to geopolitical competition. The current schedule targets a crewed lunar landing in early 2028, followed by initial work on a permanent base near the moon’s south pole later that year.
“NASA is very hot,” he said. “But NASA is hot right now because we are in a great-power competition. That’s across AI, energy and infrastructure, and everything you can imagine militarily, but certainly in the domain of space. We cannot take our foot off the gas. Really, if we miss our time by a matter of months, there are only so many good parking spots in the south pole of the moon, where we want to build our moon base. Well, the Chinese want to build their moon base there, too.”
NASA is relying on Rocketdyne and other commercial partners to set a fast pace.
“For all the great companies, the partners that are contributing to our near-impossible objectives, now is absolutely the time,” Isaacman said. “Just as so many of you were probably inspired by the space race in the 1960s and what we accomplished — all those books and movies that came from it — you’re now contributing to that.”
One of the VIPs in the audience, Redmond Mayor Angela Birney, said she was energized by Isaacman’s visit. “I am so excited that Rocketdyne is on the forefront of missions in space,” she said. “For me, as a former science teacher and someone who’s so interested in encouraging innovation and development, this just feels like a fantastic day to celebrate all of that.”
After his talk, Isaacman told GeekWire that Washington state is home to a “lot of industry” that’s contributing to America’s space effort.
“It takes contributions from great talent all across the nation to contribute to our world-changing efforts,” he said, “but it just happens to be that a lot of it is here in Washington.”
An artist’s conception shows the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter in Martian orbit. (Blue Origin Photo)
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has won a contract worth up to $700 million to boost NASA’s telecommunications capability in Martian orbit, using a version of the company’s Blue Ring multi-mission space platform.
The contract calls on Blue Origin to deliver a high-performance Mars telecommunications orbiter to NASA by the end of 2028, the space agency said in a news release. Blue Origin would also be charged with operating the Mars telecommunications network as part of NASA’s broader space communications and navigation infrastructure.
Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said the Blue Ring spacecraft for the mission was already in production in Huntsville, Alabama. “Before the first human steps on Mars, we have to build the road. … MTO will enable science, carry payloads, and help lay the foundation for human exploration,” he said in a post to X.
“MTO is the backbone of America’s Mars exploration program for the next decade and beyond, and will provide the reliable communications capacity that will keep future robotic and human missions connected to each other and to Earth,” Tory Bruno, president of Blue Origin’s National Security Group, said in a news release. “This awarded contract is a testament to the Blue Origin team that has been building Blue Ring with exactly this kind of mission in mind. We’re ready, and so is the hardware.”
NASA’s current telecommunications links to Mars rely on an aging set of orbiters, including Mars Odyssey (launched in 2001) and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (launched in 2005). The multinational relay network also makes use of the European Space Agency’s Mars Express and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. In addition to the orbiting relay satellites, NASA’s probes on the Martian surface can communicate directly with Earth to a limited degree.
Plans for a new Mars telecommunications orbiter have been under consideration for more than a decade and a half, but had been repeatedly put on hold due to budget concerns. This May, NASA issued a request for proposals relating to a commercial network for the Red Planet, drawing responses from Blue Origin as well as Rocket Lab.
NASA said the Mars Telecommunications Network would be managed by the space agency’s Space Communications and Navigation program. The network is expected to be operational at Mars by 2030 to support current and future missions to the Red Planet.
NASA has decided to use a simpler spacesuit for its initial missions to the lunar surface, Ars has learned.
The agency announced the decision during an internal meeting this week as it seeks to accelerate its program to land humans at the south pole of the Moon as early as 2028. At the direction of Artemis Program Manager Jeremy Parsons, NASA will work with Axiom Space to develop a "Sortie Suit" variant of the planned spacesuit for the lunar surface.
Sources said the Sortie Suit will be used for the initial landing missions flown on landers developed both by SpaceX and Blue Origin. Among the goals of the initiative are to lower the mass of the spacesuit, reduce its complexity, and simplify interfaces between the spacesuits and lunar landers.
Perhaps the biggest question going into the Artemis II mission this spring was how the heat shield at the base of the spacecraft would perform during reentry through Earth's atmosphere.
The ablative heat shield, designed to char upon reentry while keeping the crew safe, had experienced unexpected losses of large chunks during a test flight in late 2022. After much deliberation, and not without controversy, NASA decided to fly the Artemis II heat shield as is but modify the spacecraft's reentry trajectory.
Obviously, the heat shield worked. The crew of Artemis II, led by commander Reid Wiseman, safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean after a triumphant trip around the Moon. Afterward, they and other NASA officials offered general comments, saying the heat shield looked good.
For the first time in more than 30 years, NASA has no firm plans to send any new landers or rovers to Mars. Instead, the agency's near-term focus at the red planet is on aerial drones, a pioneering mode of exploration that didn't seem realistic until a few years ago.
The first real use of drones for science at Mars will come with the SkyFall mission, a fleet of three helicopters set for launch as soon as late 2028. SkyFall's helicopters will ride to the red planet with NASA's Space Reactor-1 "Freedom" mission, which has the primary objective of demonstrating nuclear electric propulsion in deep space.
The launch schedule is aggressive for SR-1 Freedom and SkyFall, projects that didn't even exist in NASA's portfolio six months ago. NASA's plan for the SR-1 Freedom mission, estimated to cost $2.1 billion, calls for repurposing the core module of the canceled Gateway lunar space station into a testbed for nuclear electric propulsion. SkyFall will build on NASA's success with the Ingenuity helicopter, an experimental vehicle that became the first rotorcraft to fly on another world in 2021.
NASA's $4.3 billion Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, equipped with a 300-megapixel camera sighted through a refurbished spy mirror, launched Sunday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a mission to reveal the mysterious forces driving the Universe.
The new mission will extend the vision of NASA's other famous observatories, providing a field of view 100 times wider than the Hubble Space Telescope and complementing the groundbreaking work of the James Webb Space Telescope. Roman is just the second NASA-led astrophysics mission to launch this century, following the launch of Webb in 2021.
Unlike Webb, which suffered many years of delays before reaching space, Roman arrived at the launch pad nine months before NASA's commitment to send it skyward by May 2027.
As is standard procedure for major NASA missions, the US space agency held a post-launch news conference on Sunday morning at Kennedy Space Center in Florida to provide information about how the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope was faring during its initial maneuvers.
What was not standard, however, is what happened in the middle of the news conference. A little less than half an hour in, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman looked down at his mobile phone, and then stood up and walked away from the dais where he had been seated behind a table along with other NASA officials. He briefly left the room.
Isaacman returned about a minute later, phone in hand, apologizing for interrupting NASA's chief of science, Nicky Fox, as she was speaking about the mission. "The President of the United States of America would like to address and congratulate everyone on this mission," Isaacman said, returning to his seat.
SpaceX is scheduled to launch the Roman Space Telescope on a Falcon Heavy rocket, with the launch window opening at 7:26 a.m. EDT (1126 GMT). NASA will carry the launch live on YouTube.
CNN offers this mission overview from NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. "Roman will investigate dark matter, dark energy and the structure of the universe itself, and accelerate the future of discovery of potentially habitable planets outside our solar system." In fact, "NASA anticipates that Roman will image more than 50 times as much of the sky in the next five years as Hubble covered in three decades," reports USA Today, noting that "every single image it beams back to Earth will contain the equivalent of 100 pictures Hubble would capture."
The barrel-shaped Roman telescope is due to set up operations nearly 1 million miles from Earth and begin scouring previously unobservable areas of the cosmos... NASA will make all of Roman's data available for anyone to peruse, meaning astronomers from all over the world will have the opportunity to make use of the observatory for advanced research, NASA says... Spanning 42 feet long and more than 14 feet wide, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is outfitted with two primary instruments
Its 300-megapixel near-infrared camera is built to look across the universe and study the three-dimensional distribution of dark matter, reports The Conversation. But it's also carrying a coronagraph instrument built to dramatically reduce the glare from distant stars "that will test the technology for future missions that plan to detect Earth-like planets around other stars."
The mission's generating some excitement. "Nearly three decades after dark energy's discovery, astronomers are letting themselves hope that a breakthrough is almost at hand," writes Scientific American, adding that cosmologists "are increasingly questioning the validity of their vaunted standard model, although no one can decide exactly what comes next."
Roman will chase down three different ways of detecting dark energy, seeking to more precisely define what its effects on the universe are and whether they're changing over time. The first one involves surveying the skies for a special variety of supernova that's so predictable that scientists can use it as a beacon for calculating what a host galaxy's distance is and how fast it's moving away from us — the same technique that first betrayed dark energy back in the 1990s. The second entails mapping large numbers of galaxies to discern huge, faint bubbles in the cosmos that represent the fossilized signatures of sound waves that froze out of the universe's primordial plasma as it expanded and cooled. The sizes of those bubbles scale with the size and growth of the very early universe, offering a powerful probe for studying cosmic change over time. The third tracer uses a technique called microlensing, which reveals clumps of dark matter via their warping of background starlight, to fill in scientists' still incomplete reckoning of matter's cosmic distribution.
The Houston Chronicle reports that the telescope will also study rogue planets, isolated black holes, starquakes and planet-forming disks around nearby stars.
"Almost regardless of what your scientific interest is, Roman is probably already planning to take observations," Julie McEnery, Roman's senior project scientist at NASA, said during a July news conference."
NBC News reports that after the Roman telescope launches, "it's set to spend more than three months journeying to its final destination, located roughly 1 million miles from Earth."
Three primary surveys are planned over the course of the Roman telescope's mission. During the largest one, which will last over a year, the telescope will peer through the Milky Way's dense, star-packed center, known as the galactic bulge, building a vast catalog of all the astronomical objects it observes. The second and third surveys will focus on dark matter and dark energy.
Axios notes that Roman's primary mirror "is about the same size as that of Hubble's, but at 80% less weight — reflecting huge tech advancements since Hubble was built in the 1970s." And NPR reports NASA began planning the $4.3 billion telescope 15 years ago to search for supernovas to help explore dark energy — when "a call came in from the government office in charge of surveillance satellites."
"The National Reconnaissance Office reached out to NASA," [remembers cosmologist Daniel Scolnic at Duke University], "saying, 'We have this amazing satellite sitting in a hangar that we're not using. And what what do you guys think about instead of pointing downwards, we point upwards, and you guys use it?'" NASA said yes. It took some substantial modifications, but now that old satellite is set to become NASA's next major space observatory....
Another goal of the telescope is to spend a month surveying all the stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Julie McEnery is Roman's project scientist. She says even though Roman has broadly the same sensitivity and sharpness of vision as the currently orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, its design lets it do things much faster. "That one month of observations to survey our Milky Way galaxy would take about a century with Hubble," says McEnery.
President Trump awarded the four-member Artemis II crew the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and signed an executive order directing the creation of a new U.S. Space Academy. The proposed academy would train engineers, scientists, technicians, operators, and astronauts for NASA, the Space Force, and the commercial space industry. Houston Public Media reports: The Artemis II crew -- NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen -- retraced history as they flew around the moon and back in April, the first time humans have been in lunar territory since the 1970s. He had previously hosted the crew members at the White House following their mission and called them during the mission while the crew was tens of thousands of miles away. "The one thing that really sticks out to us [from that call] is you said how proud you are and how proud our nation is for the job that we've just accomplished," Wiseman said during Friday's ceremony. "And for us, that is what we set out to do. We wanted to inspire this nation to learn."
During the ceremony, Trump also signed an executive order to create the "United States Space Academy." Under the order, a Presidential Commission on the U.S. Space Academy has 120 days to create a report with guidelines for the U.S. Space Academy. The Commission will include NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman as its Chair, as well as other NASA and space officials. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Trump's Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and Michael Kratsios, assistant to the president for science and technology. In effect, it allows the Trump Administration to build the U.S. Space Academy to its liking. "It will serve both the United States Space Force as well as NASA and the civilian spaceflight industry," Trump said. "And it will attract, train, graduate the very best that our nation and our nation really has to offer." As for where the academy will be located, Trump said he was "going to be choosing a location very shortly."
During a visit to Johnson Space Center, President Trump on Friday signed an executive order to establish a new commission with the purpose of creating the first national space academy.
"It's clear that we will need to educate and train an entire generation of skilled service members, engineers, and civil operators, and everything else to do what we have to do," Trump said. "I will sign an executive order to begin the process of creating a new national academy. It's called the US Space Academy. That's a big deal."
The proposed United States Space Academy would fall under the jurisdiction of NASA, and according to US space officials, is not intended be a traditional service academy in the sense that it educates and trains officers for the armed services, such as the Air Force Academy.
For the first time in decades, NASA has rolled out one of its iconic astronaut training aircraft with a bold, new look.
The space agency debuted a new livery on one of its T-38 jets in celebration of its program to return astronauts to the Moon. The Artemis design retains nods to what made the "white rocket" immediately recognizable, but adds a new colorway and painted graphics to make clear where NASA is headed.
"This new 'Artemis' livery has a black and white paint scheme with blue and red stripes that separate those two paint schemes," said Sean Brady, who proposed and designed the new livery while serving as the T-38 project pilot in NASA's Aircraft Operations Division (AOD), part of the Flight Operations Directorate at Johnson Space Center in Houston. "The Artemis program logo in the back and a picture of the Moon is on the left and right side of the rear fuselage."
A new national space transportation policy signed by President Donald Trump on Thursday calls for the development of more spaceports to support more than 1,000 launches and reentries per year by 2030.
The presidential memorandum replaces a 2013 policy signed by former President Barack Obama. Both policies share an emphasis on supporting the commercial space industry and underscore the importance of assured access to space. But the launch sector has changed immensely since then. There were 176 orbital launch attempts from US soil last year, nearly 10 times the number in 2013. SpaceX led the pack last year with 165 orbital launches of its Falcon 9 rocket, plus five suborbital test flights of the much larger Starship.
"By 2030, our space transportation ranges must grow to support more than 1,000 launches and reentries every year," the policy says. "The policies set forth in this memorandum will secure America's continued superiority in space."
While Hackaday’s bread and butter is, of course, hacks, we sometimes cover things that most of us are interested in that are probably out of reach for the typical hacker. Space, for example, is undeniably cool, even though your chances of putting yourself or even your own rover on the Moon aren’t very good at the moment (but, of course, give it time). If you are looking for something to put on your e-reader and you are also interested in space, save your money and get some downloadable books directly from NASA.
There’s something for everyone on the site. The site has four main categories: aeronautics, Hubble, science, and NASA history. Aeronautics has two volumes of “NASA’s Contributions to Aeronautics,” a book on the X-15, and a book about aviation pressure suits. Want to know more about the giant wind tunnel at Langley?
For the Hubble, you’ll find titles that have great images, of course, but also a book with an overview of the telescope or, if you prefer, about gravitational lensing.
The science titles go really deep with books on black holes, Landsat, the Cassini mission, and the Spitzer telescope. If you prefer history, there’s everything from a history of near-Earth object research to lessons from the Columbia tragedy for engineers, managers, and leaders. We were also interested in the book “Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication.”
The books are typically available in EPUB or PDF, and they are all free. Just what you need for your next plane trip or to round out your Calibre library.
A Seattle game studio is collaborating with NASA to create a new educational video game that challenges players to plan, collaborate, and invent their way to building a virtual lunar colony.
Moonbase Y, currently under development at August Interactive, is a cooperative, exploration-focused online video game that puts players ages 13 and older in the role of the architects and engineers of a mission to return humanity to the moon. Step one is leaving Earth’s atmosphere, while step two is successfully landing on the lunar surface.
Once they’re actually on the moon, Moonbase Y players can craft items, research technologies, build their own virtual colony, and use all the usual collaborative tools found in online building games, all in a game that’s built on source images and data provided directly by NASA. To succeed, they’ll need to come up with their own solutions for the real-world problems that will confront an off-world settlement.
“There’s a whole generation of kids who may very well live and work on the moon,” said Sarah Kneller, August Interactive’s chief experience officer. “It’s imminent.”
Kneller describes Moonbase Y as a way to “not only let people imagine the future, but give them the tools to help create it.” It’s one thing to learn about the sciences and technologies required to construct a lunar colony, but it’s a better educational experience to actually let someone do it themselves.
As a video game, Moonbase Y can be summarized as a crafting-focused collaborative RPG that’s using up-to-date real scientific data. Any and every solution that players will have to come up with to build their colony in Moonbase Y is something that could at least theoretically work under real-world conditions.
August Interactive CEO Kristin Wood, left, and CXO Sarah Kneller. (LinkedIn Photos)
According to August Interactive’s CEO Kristin Wood, NASA’s current goal is to have an inhabited lunar base by 2040, as a first step toward a crewed expedition to Mars. In order to do so, Wood said, “there are approximately 187 technologies that will need to be created.”
Moonbase Y isn’t an attempt to crowdsource those solutions. Instead, it’s an educational game that’s made to let players work on specific necessary skills in a collaborative environment.
“We want a 13-year-old to understand they don’t have to be a rocket scientist [to contribute],” Kneller said. “They can say, ‘There is something I’m good at that matters.’” Wherever someone’s talents lie, from hard sciences to soft skills, they could be a part of a project like this. No one is irrelevant.
That’s part of Moonbase Y’s deliberately hopeful tone. From the ground up, the game is being built as a deliberate act of optimism. While it’s possible for a player’s colony to fail, that’s part of the learning process. You can always start again, and this time you’re a little smarter for having had the experience. This is a tough job, but that’s part of the fun.
“As entertainers, it’s really easy to sell the terrifying outcome… this mental model that the future is bleak,” Kneller said. As a result, Moonbase Y is purposefully swinging hard in the other direction.
(August Interactive press image)
Kneller used to work for Valve Software in Bellevue, Wash., where she spent more than a decade as an executive producer for Dota 2’s esports circuit. She left the company in 2023 to co-found August Interactive.
Other team members at August include Wood, a former CIA officer turned tech entrepreneur; CRO Mike Ambinder, a former research scientist for Valve who specializes in experimental psychology as it applies to game design; and creative director Jon Pierre Yousef, a Florida-based artist who’s contributed to franchises such as Fortnite and Call of Duty.
In addition to Moonbase Y, August Interactive released its first professional project on July 21. Spire is a “performance intelligence layer” that analyzes users’ style of play in competitive video games and gives players tips on how to improve. The idea behind Spire is to smooth out the onboarding process for multiplayer games like Rocket League or Dota 2, in order to make them more accessible for new players.
Moonbase Y is currently in production at August Interactive, with no stated release window.
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The lens-like objects covering the surface of LAGEOS-1 are corner cube retroreflectors, which have the nifty effect of always reflecting incident light right back towards its source.
