Additionally, Paul Cowling will join on July 2 as chief legal and corporate affairs officer, bringing extensive telecommunications sector experience from his time at Shaw and Xplore.

An artist’s conception shows a nuclear thermal propulsion system at work in orbit (USNC-Tech Illustration)As more and more hardware goes into Earth orbit, and eventually to the moon and Mars, where will the power to run all those machines come from?That’s one of the questions under consideration at a State of the Space Industrial Base workshop that’s being conducted this week at Seattle’s Museum of Flight.The workshop, hosted by Space Northwest, is bringing together government, academic and commercial leaders to assess the state of advanced power and propulsion for space missions, as well as the outlook for a Department of Defense initiative known as Hybrid Space Architecture.Input from the workshop will be combined with insights gained at two other workshops in Florida and New Mexico to help the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit produce its annual report about the space industry’s potential contributions to sustaining America’s leadership on the final frontier.“There’s so much going on, at both big companies and small companies, and we figure that it’s about time that the government actually comes to you,” Steve “Bucky” Butow, director of DIU’s space portfolio, told more than 60 attendees during Tuesday’s opening session.The topics being addressed at this week’s workshop play to two of the Pacific Northwest’s space industry strengths. The Seattle area already produces more than half of the world’s satellites annually — largely thanks to SpaceX’s Starlink operation in Redmond, Wash., plus LeoStella in Tukwila and Xplore in Redmond. Meanwhile, Amazon’s Project Kuiper is gearing up to build thousands of satellites at a facility in Kirkland.All those satellites could play a role in the Hybrid Space Infrastructure that DIU envisions. “In short, space internet,” Butow said. Microsoft Azure Space, Amazon Web Services and Project Kuiper are among DIU’s commercial partners in the space infrastructure project.The region’s role in developing advanced propulsion and power systems might not be as well-known, but it’s arguably just as worthy of note.“The Pacific Northwest is unique in the United States, in that it has aerospace and nuclear, all within the same region,” said Paolo Venneri, executive vice president for Ultra Safe Nuclear Corp’s Seattle-based tech division. Washington state’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the Idaho National Laboratory are both nuclear research hotspots, so to speak. And the Seattle area has more than its share of commercial nuclear ventures — ranging from TerraPower, the small-scale nuclear fission company founded by Bill Gates, to far-out fusion companies such as Helion Energy, Avalanche Energy and Zap Energy.“You have this unique combination of workforce and talent that all touches on all these areas that we’re talking about, propulsion and nuclear

Xplore is working on its Xcraft satellite platform at its HQ in Redmond, Wash. (Xplore Illustration)The National Reconnaissance Office awarded study contracts to six companies offering — or planning to offer — satellite images of Earth in multiple wavelengths, including Redmond, Wash.-based Xplore.Other companies receiving contracts under NRO’s multi-stage Strategic Commercial Enhancements Broad Agency Announcement Framework include BlackSky Technology, which is based in Virginia but traces its corporate roots to Seattle, plus HyperSat, Orbital Sidekick, Pixxel and Planet. “We are operating the largest, most diverse, most capable overhead constellation in NRO’s history as we face increasingly complex threats in space and on the ground,” NRO Director Chris Scolese said today in a news release. “Through these newest contracts, we are very excited to explore the potential of commercial hyperspectral imagery and what it may be able to contribute to our world-class intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.”Hyperspectral images combine light from hundreds of wavelengths across the electromagnetic spectrum. Analysts can analyze each pixel in such images to identify objects and materials. The technology can provide insights for agriculture, mining and geology as well as intelligence and surveillance.Xplore is developing satellites for remote imaging from low Earth orbit, or LEO, as well as for farther-out applications in lunar orbit and beyond