Vast appoints Former Slingshot Aerospace CEO Melanie Stricklan as special programs SVP. * Melanie Stricklan will lead Vast's newly established special programs division * The new division is focused on space-based capabilities for defense and intelligence missions * The unit will combine Vast's commercial platforms, engineering expertise and advanced manufacturing capabilities Former Slingshot Aerospace CEO Melanie Stricklan has been named senior vice president of special programs at Vast. Stricklan will lead the newly established special programs division, which will develop space-based capabilities for the national security enterprise, including the defense and intelligence communities, the company said Wednesday. What will Stricklan lead at Vast? Vast's new division will support both classified and unclassified efforts, combining the company's commercial platforms with its engineering and advanced manufacturing capabilities. The company said the unit will produce U.S.-built systems for national security missions using the speed and cost structures of commercial development. Vast CEO Max Haot said Stricklan brings more than two decades of experience spanning advanced technology, national security and commercial space. "She is joining Vast at a pivotal moment as we develop in-house, high-performance technologies with direct applications for the U.S. defense and intelligence communities." Vast's move into the national security space comes as government and industry leaders prepare to discuss the sector's evolving priorities at the Potomac Officers Club's 2026 Air and Space Summit on July 30. The event will bring together senior Air Force, Space Force and NASA leaders to examine emerging technologies and programs shaping the future of air and space capabilities. Register now! What is Stricklan's background? Stricklan co-founded Slingshot Aerospace in 2016 and led the space intelligence and autonomous systems company for a decade. She served in the U.S. Air Force for 21 years, where she gained extensive experience holding leadership roles in advanced space systems development and testing, acquisitions, operations and national security. She most recently served as chief innovation and advancement officer at Space Foundation, where she grew Space Workforce for Tomorrow into a nationwide coalition for the space industry. Stricklan has also served on the Aerospace Department External Advisory Committee at the University of Texas at Austin for more than five years and as a member of the White House's National Space Council Users' advisory group. What is Vast? Founded in 2021, Vast develops commercial space infrastructure and technologies for activities including microgravity research, in-space manufacturing and human spaceflight. The Long Beach, California-based company is developing its Haven series of commercial space stations and plans to launch Haven-1 in 2027. Vast has raised $500 million in financing to advance development of its Haven space stations, grow its workforce and expand its facilities. The company is also pursuing government opportunities, including NASA's private astronaut mission program and the Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations initiative. The company has also added senior leaders with experience in government and national security. In June, former Aerospace Corp. President and CEO Steve Isakowitz joined Vast as an adviser, bringing experience from NASA, the U.S. Space Force and other government organizations.

A rare property investment opportunity is growing in the El Segundo-Torrance corridor. Featured image credit: van ha. It's easy for minds to drift to Downtown LA, West Hollywood, or the Westside when considering commercial property investment in Los Angeles. They're pretty reliable markets. Yet, some of the most compelling commercial investment activity in the area right now is happening in the often-overlooked South Bay, specifically El Segundo and Torrance. In these communities, life sciences, the aerospace industry, and institutional capital are meeting to create a perfect storm that is reshaping the landscape. Innovation with deep roots. This may come as no surprise to any investors who have already been paying attention to the South Bay. Over the years, the area has developed a reputation as a hotspot for the high-skilled technical industry. In just the last few decades, industry giants like Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon (now RTX), L3Harris, and the Aerospace Corporation have moved into a corridor comprised of El Segundo, Torrance, Redondo Beach, and Manhattan Beach. You'd be hard-pressed to find a greater concentration of engineers, scientists, and research experts anywhere else in the greater Los Angeles area. These factors have created the ideal incubator for thriving life sciences and biotech activity in the region. In El Segundo, you'll find notable global organizations like Grifols, AstraZeneca, and Illumina, undoubtedly valuing the proximity to the LAX airport, the city's highly-skilled workforce, and the local government's penchant for tax incentives and rapid permitting. Torrance, on the other hand, is home to the LA Biotech Center, a collection of wet labs offering accommodation to scientists from raw start-ups to established firms. It even includes operations devoted to specialized stem cell and biotechnology research. Institutional investors are already making moves. But perhaps the strongest indicator of reliability in this property investment corridor is the fact that institutional buyers are committing. In 2024, for example, UCLA Health acquired a 170,000-square-foot life sciences building near El Segundo to the tune of $55 million. What's more, they plan to drop another $90 million on upgrades to accommodate its Sports Medicine Institute. The project was zoned to allow for an additional 230,000 square feet of development. And whether or not UCLA Health continues with an expansion, it still points to the long-term potential these institutional giants see in the submarket. Meanwhile, the Aerospace Corporation unveiled a $100 million investment in its El Segundo-based engineering and technology campus. This serves to reinforce its stated commitment to maintain 2,800 employees, along with its core operations, in the city. New faces bringing new demand. That's not to say every name that moves into the South Bay is an industry icon. In 2024, Aerospacelab, a Belgium-based satellite manufacturer, leased a 34,700-square-foot Torrance compound to establish its U.S. headquarters and factory. They ultimately chose Torrance because of its proximity to the Space Force Base, Space Systems Command offices, and a concentration of aerospace contractors. In 2025, Heart Aerospace, a company backed by Bill Gates, leased commercial space in Torrance to begin work on a hybrid-electric aircraft. They were drawn by the same advantages that had attracted Aerospacelab. For those considering property investment within this corridor, it's worth noting that the constant influx of science and technology tenants continues to build demand for lab, R&D, and flexible industrial spaces. And these are the types of commercial investments that have shown resilience, even when a market as a whole has struggled. The potential of the El Segundo-Torrance corridor. The El Segundo-Torrance corridor offers a rare opportunity for the right investors. Between its reliable STEM talent base, growing institutional influence, supportive local government, and competitive pricing relating to more popular LA submarkets, it's got a lot to attract someone who has the funding to elevate a building to what these cutting-edge companies need. Life sciences are expected to see reduced new supply across the nation in 2026, making a submarket like El Segundo-Torrance stand out even more for property investment. Sure, there will always be Downtown office towers. And, in recent years, the fast-approaching 2028 Olympics has been driving some interesting commercial deals that will last long after the games end. Yet, the South Bay's unassuming but steady growth into life sciences and advanced technology continues rendering it an often overlooked and undervalued submarket by all but the most astute investors in Los Angeles.

AI in space: how autonomy is reshaping the final frontier. In January 2026, an artificial intelligence (AI) tool analyzed nearly 100 million Hubble Space Telescope images and identified more than 800 cosmic anomalies that had remained hidden for potentially 35 years - completing the search in just two and a half days. That kind of discovery marks a turning point for AI in space. The technology is becoming an active layer of mission support - helping spacecraft navigate, satellites monitor their own health, crews receive support, and scientists uncover patterns that were previously out of reach. This article explores where AI is already transforming space operations, what opportunities and risks it creates for the industry, and what these changes demand from the engineers responsible for building safe, secure, and mission-ready systems. Spacecraft autonomy and deep space exploration. In deep-space missions, autonomy does not replace human expertise - it extends it. As spacecraft operate farther from Earth, AI can help teams manage distance, delay, and uncertainty by enabling systems to respond more intelligently between ground commands. Autonomous navigation. NASA's Perseverance rover, which has been exploring Mars since 2021, is already demonstrating that shift. Its driving is now 88% autonomous, using onboard computer vision to identify hazards and navigate without constant ground input. Earlier this year, it went further, completing the first Mars drives planned end-to-end by generative AI, with no human route planners creating the waypoints. That same shift is shaping other missions, too. The European Space Agency's (ESA's) Hera spacecraft is designed to autonomously navigate around the Didymos-Dimorphos asteroid system, using visual tracking, lidar-based altimeter readings, inertial sensors, and star-tracker measurements to understand its position and operate safely in a complex, low-gravity environment. Astronaut assistants. As missions move farther from Earth, crews will need AI support inside the spacecraft, too. Communication delays and blackouts can make real-time medical or operational help from Earth difficult when immediate guidance is needed. Google and NASA's Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant (CMO-DA) addresses that challenge directly. The multimodal AI system is trained on spaceflight medical literature to help crews diagnose and treat symptoms without physician contact. AI-enabled crew support is also advancing through robotics. On the International Space Station (ISS), Stanford researchers used machine learning to improve motion planning for Astrobee, NASA's free-flying robotic assistant, reducing autonomous movement planning time by 50-60%. Spacecraft health. Mega-constellations make manual satellite health monitoring impossible at scale. With the satellite count projected to grow from roughly 15,000 today to 100,000 by 2030, operators need AI systems that can analyze telemetry, flag anomalies, predict component failures, and assess fuel margins before issues disrupt operations. In April, The Aerospace Corporation and Google Public Sector announced a proof-of-concept AI tool for constellation operations designed to handle the high-velocity demands of modern space domain awareness while helping on-call engineers to "focus their expertise where it matters most," according to Kevin Bell, senior vice president of Aerospace's Engineering and Technology Group. Space-Based data processing and discovery. A growing data bottleneck. As the number of satellites in orbit increases, space missions are producing more data than traditional ground-based workflows can process quickly. NASA's Earth observation archive has already crossed 100 petabytes (PB) and is projected to reach 320 PB by 2030, while Europe's Copernicus program holds more than 78 PB. At that scale, the challenge is not just collecting data - it is moving, filtering, and interpreting it fast enough to support time-sensitive use cases like disaster response and large-scale scientific discovery. AI at the edge. Prithvi predicted burn scar impacts from the Gifford Fire near Los Angeles (August 17, 2025). (Photo/Courtesy: NASA) One solution is edge computing: By running edge AI directly on satellites and connecting it with cloud-to-edge workflows on the ground, space systems can process data closer to where it is collected instead of routing everything back to Earth for analysis. In May, researchers from Adelaide University, ESA's Φ-lab, and Thales Alenia Space deployed NASA and IBM's Prithvi geospatial AI foundation model into orbit, validating it aboard the ISS and the Kanyini satellite. By supporting tasks like flood mapping, cloud detection, burn scar identification, and disaster monitoring onboard, Prithvi helps move satellite data from observation to actionable intelligence in near-real time. Cosmic discovery. AI is also changing how scientists search the universe. AnomalyMatch, an AI-powered discovery tool designed to identify unusual objects in astronomical image archives, used an unsupervised neural network to scan the Hubble Legacy Archive and surface more than 800 previously undocumented objects - including gravitational lenses, galaxy mergers, and unclassified anomalies - that manual review could not have found at that scale. As missions like Euclid, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope generate even larger datasets, AI-assisted discovery will become essential to the science pipeline. NASA's ExoMiner++ model is applying a similar approach to Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) data, using AI to sift through brightness measurements and help scientists identify promising planet candidates more efficiently than manual review alone. The new frontier: orbital data centers. As demand for AI processing grows, companies are beginning to look at orbit as a potential answer to the power, cooling, and scaling limits facing terrestrial data centers. In January, SpaceX filed plans with the FCC for up to one million orbital data center satellites operating between 500 km and 2,000 km. The proposed architecture would rely on solar power, radiative cooling, and high-bandwidth optical links through Starlink to support AI workloads in orbit. SpaceX has framed orbital data centers to meet accelerating AI compute demand, with projections of up to 100 gigawatts of annual orbital compute additions if Starship becomes fully reusable at scale. The concept is still highly experimental. Other organizations, including ESA-backed initiatives, Axiom Space, Starcloud, and Google's Project Suncatcher, are exploring related ideas, but major barriers remain around radiation, latency, debris, servicing, cost, and commercial viability. Still, the direction is significant: What was once a speculative space concept is now being evaluated as a potential response to the power, cooling, and scale constraints facing data centers on Earth. Governance and cybersecurity. Autonomous spacecraft, orbital data centers, and AI-enabled satellite operations can improve speed and resilience, but they also introduce new risks around system access, decision authority, accountability, and trust. The answer is not to avoid AI, but to deploy it responsibly - with secure software practices, defined decision boundaries, decision logging, risk-based safety assessments, and clear human oversight. For organizations building mission-critical space systems, partners like Performance can help bring the engineering discipline, cybersecurity focus, and high-assurance practices needed to use AI safely and effectively. What comes next. The space economy reached $613 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow to $1.8 trillion by 2035. Realizing that growth will require AI systems that can operate reliably in mission-critical environments, where failure carries technical, financial, and operational consequences. Success will depend on more than AI adoption - it will depend on engineering workflows that can move faster while maintaining the discipline aerospace and defense (A&D) programs require. Performance develops mission-critical software for commercial aviation, space, and defense programs. Its AI-first workflows are built with governance and guardrails from the start, combining elite engineering talent with AI-assisted development at scale to deliver secure, certifiable systems faster - without compromising assurance. Ready to move at the speed of AI while maintaining the rigor your program demands? Performance Software Corporation 25500 N Norterra Pkwy Suite 300 Phoenix, Arizona 85085 +1 623-780-1517