Jane Edwards

Axiom Space and NASA have signed an agreement to perform the first mission of private astronauts to the International Space Station. The Axiom Mission 1 spaceflight is expected to occur no earlier than January 2022 and will take off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

More

The U.S. Postal Service has implemented an edge artificial intelligence system on the NVIDIA EGX platform to help speed up the process of identifying and tracking packages within hours instead of several days. The distributed edge AI platform, called the Edge Computing Infrastructure Program, emerged from a three-week sprint in 2019. During the sprint, a USPS data scientist and NVIDIA architects identified ways to accelerate the analysis of billions of images of packages each USPS center generates by designing deep learning models.

More

In-Q-Tel has made a strategic investment in Fiddler to help the Palo Alto, California-based artificial intelligence platforms developer further advance its explainable AI tool development efforts. Fiddler also announced its participation in FinRegLab’s research to assess the fairness and transparency of machine learning models.

More

BETA Technologies has received airworthiness approval from the U.S. Air Force for its electric vertical aircraft. The approval allows the company to begin operating its manned ALIA electric aircraft under the AFWERX Agility Prime Program that uses government resources to rapidly deploy new platforms to help broaden technology transition pathways and advance dual-use markets.

More

Firefly Aerospace has raised $75 million in a round of Series A financing led by DADA Holdings and $100 million through a secondary transaction that includes the sale of holdings owned by its major investor Noosphere Ventures. Astera Institute, Canon Ball and other investors participated in the Series A round, which gives Firefly a valuation of more than $1 billion.

More