Washington Harbour Partners led the financing, which was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and included participation from Alpine Space Ventures, Founders Fund, Balerion Space Ventures, Fulcrum, 137 Ventures and others. The latest round is the Torrance, California-based startup's second in just over nine months, after it raised a $30 million Series A last April. It has now raised a total of over $136 million since its 2023 inception. Its funding comes amid red-hot investor interest in space tech. Global venture funding to the sector last year totaled $14.2 billion ' more than double the annual totals in 2023 and 2024 ' per Crunchbase data. Funding recipients reliably include a mix of defense tech, satellite and rocket developers, and startups finding innovative use cases for geospatial data. The company said the latest round follows 'millions in signed contracts,' including a $49.8 million contract with the Space Force to support the Satellite Control Network. The SCN, according to Northwood, is 'the critical infrastructure used for launches and early satellite operations, to track and control satellites, and to provide emergency support to tumbling and lost satellites.'...

Over the years, passing spacecraft have observed mystifying weather patterns at the poles of Jupiter and Saturn. The two planets host very different types of polar vortices, which are huge atmospheric whirlpools that rotate over a planet's polar region. On Saturn, a single massive polar vortex appears to cap the north pole in a curiously hexagonal shape, while on Jupiter, a central polar vortex is surrounded by eight smaller vortices, like a pan of swirling cinnamon rolls. Given that both planets are similar in many ways ' they are roughly the same size and made from the same gaseous elements ' the stark difference in their polar weather patterns has been a longstanding mystery. Now, MIT scientists have identified a possible explanation for how the two different systems may have evolved. Their findings could help scientists understand not only the planets' surface weather patterns, but also what might lie beneath the clouds, deep within their interiors. In a study appearing this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team simulates various ways in which well-organized vortex patterns may form out of random stimulations on a gas giant. A gas giant is a large planet that is made mostly of gaseous elements, such as Jupiter and Saturn. Among a wide range of plausible planetary configurations, the team found that, in some cases, the currents coalesced into a single large vortex, similar to Saturn's pattern, whereas other simulations produced multiple large circulations, akin to Jupiter's vortices....

Going to the moon was one thing; going to Mars will be quite another. The distance alone is intimidating. While the moon is 238,855 miles away, the distance to Mars is between 33 million and 249 million miles. The propulsion systems that got us to the moon just won't work. Taylor Hampson, a master's student in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), is well aware of the problem. It's one of the many reasons he's excited about his NASA-sponsored research into nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP). The technique uses nuclear energy to heat a propellant, like hydrogen, to an extremely high temperature and expel it through a nozzle. The resultant thrust can significantly reduce travel times to Mars, compared to chemical rockets. 'You can get double the efficiency, or more, from a nuclear propulsion engine with the same thrust. Besides, being in microgravity is not ideal for astronauts, so you want to get them there faster, which is a strong motivation for using nuclear propulsion over the chemical equivalents,' Hampson says....

If you went to the movies this fall, you probably met him: the Sad Art Dad. You'll have known him by his miserableness; despite the flash of the cameras and the cheers of the groundlings, he's most often found moping alone. His vocation may vary'movie star (in Jay Kelly), art-house director (Sentimental Value), blockbuster Tudor playwright (Hamnet)'but his problem tends to be the same. He has chosen great art over good parenting, utterly failing as a father, and he knows it. There's something delicious about his cocktail of self-pity and self-loathing, which can arouse both the viewer's repulsion and compassion. It may not be much fun to be a Sad Art Dad, but it's certainly fun to watch one. The distant and distracted patriarch, although abundant on-screen in 2025, is not a novel invention. Yet most movie dads are more likely to be found balancing stellar careers and model parenting (lawyer-dad in To Kill A Mockingbird; Mob-dad in the Godfather films) than exhibiting'let alone acknowledging'their fatherly flaws. Sometimes prioritizing professional ambitions is even depicted as admirable: In Interstellar, Matthew McConaughey plays an astronaut who abandons his kids for a decades-long space mission, but only in order to save humanity. The character might beat himself up for it, but the viewer understands that it's a pretty good excuse, as far as they go....