World's fastest plane (2/1/23)

Good morning. Today, we remember the seven-person crew of STS-107. 20 years ago, we lost Rick Husband, William “Willie” McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, and Ilan Ramon while Columbia was returning home and broke apart during reentry.

In today's edition...🌎 IBM and NASA✈️ Pathfinder #0033💸 The term sheet

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AI for Earth Science

IBM’s AI foundation model tech is turning its focus to a new research target: Earth science.

This morning, NASA and IBM announced a partnership that leverages the agency’s suite of geospatial data and historical imagery to generate insights on how the Earth and its climate has changed over time. IBM’s AI will analyze petabytes—that’s thousands of terabytes—of NASA’s Earth science literature and imagery, then make the process and results freely available to researchers.

Training the model: AI foundation models are trained on huge, unlabeled datasets, drawing connections between disparate pieces of information.

• Through this partnership, NASA and IBM aim to organize the agency’s giant catalog of scientific data to make performing complex searches easier and to make information on the world’s changing climate more accessible.

• NASA has 70 petabytes of archival Earth science data, which is expected to quadruple with the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) and NISAR missions. Both are expected to launch by the end of 2024.

The collaboration

This is IBM’s first time training its AI capabilities on an Earth science project. And the timing is right—with climate change causing more and more extreme weather events across the globe each year, the need for timely, accurate, and detailed geospatial data is pressing.

Rahul Ramachandran, a senior research scientist at NASA, said in a press briefing the model could help disaster responders immediately map major floods or assess damage to houses after a destructive weather event.

“That’s the potential future that we would envision if this thing works as we envision it to,” Ramachandran said.

The pair will divide and conquer to make it happen.

• IBM will devote resources to building two AI foundation models using its machine learning technology.

• NASA will make its data available, as well as provide subject matter experts in geospatial data and Earth science to guide the model and its developers.

Sorting the literature: Up first, IBM will comb through more than 300,000 scientific papers, using its AI to identify an underlying structure and thematically organize that information in hopes that researchers will have an easier time sifting through existing scientific knowledge.

Tackling HLS2: The Harmonized Landsat-Sentinel 2 (HLS2) dataset is a joint project between NASA and the US Geological Survey that tracks land usage over time. For IBM’s second trick, it will build an AI foundation model based on HLS2 data. That model can then be used for a number of downstream applications in disaster prediction and monitoring and resource management.

Pathfinder #0033, with AJ Piplica

On today’s episode, we sit down with AJ Piplica, cofounder and CEO of Hermeus Corporation. The Atlanta startup aims to make hypersonic air travel a reality before the decade is out.

Today’s episode is brought to you by Altek Space.

The Hermeus team is focused on shrinking the globe by developing the world’s fastest passenger aircraft. The timeline for that = 2029. In the meantime…

• Hermeus recently selected Pratt & Whitney’s F100 turbofan for integration into its largest hypersonic engine—a move that the company claims will save it billions in R&D costs and years of schedule.

• Also in recent memory, Hermeus successfully demonstrated a turbojet to ramjet transition with its Chimera engine.

• Finally…Hermeus raised a $100M Series B last March to develop Quarterhorse and Darkhorse, its first and second hypersonic vehicles.

A sneak peek

AJ dialed into Pathfinder straight from the belly of the beast, i.e., Hermeus’s factory in Atlanta, which was abuzz with employees and machines whirling in the background. Among other things, AJ and Ryan covered:

• The startup’s origin story

• What’s the state of hypersonics today?

• The roadmap: Chimera → Quarterhorse → Darkhorse → Halcyon

• How will the Halcyon passenger aircraft be designed?

• Derisking the business plan through iterative development and buying off the shelf

• Lowering the cost of aircraft certification

• Building in public and investing in marketing early on

• Atlanta’s talent density and Hermeus’s recruiting efforts

Pathfinder #0033 is live...listen or watch now

🎧 Listen on Spotify🍎 Listen on Apple💻 Listen on web

Or...watch using the link below:

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In Other News

• Iridium ($IRDM) announced the Iridium GO! Exec, an “ultra-portable solution for truly global connections to all smartphones, tablets, and laptops.”

• Lockheed Martin ($LMT) will launch a self-funded demo of its new LM 400 mid-sized bus this year.

• AWS announced the 2023 AWS Space Accelerator, which will include up to 15 startups. Applications close March 6.

• Capella created a new business unit to focus on government and defense agency sales. Eric Traupe will lead “Capella Federal,” as the new division is called.

• Airbus and Boeing ($BA) aim to hire 23,000 new employees in 2023.

• SpaceX launched 49 Starlink satellites on Tuesday, capping January with seven (!) launches and eight booster landings.

• D-Orbit’s Eclectic Elena, which launched as a secondary payload on the mission, was the Italian company’s first satellite carrier to be deployed in a mid-inclination orbit.

• Astra ($ASTR) recently completed a 175-second mission duty cycle of Rocket 4’s first-stage engine.

View from the White House

Congrats to Bob and Doug!!!