The U.S. Air Force is looking to lock in its launch providers for national security satellite missions to take place between 2022 and 2026, and the bids for this so-called “Phase 2” procurement contract are now in. The field of competitors looking to become one of the two companies chosen is a who’s who of U.S. commercial launch providers at the moment, including SpaceX, Blue Origin, ULA and Northrop Grumman.

Both Northrop Grumman and Blue Origin are new entrants in this particular launch contracting area, while SpaceX and ULA are existing providers that handle U.S. national security missions right now. SpaceX additionally has a bit of a head start, since its Falcon rockets are the only proven, certified launch vehicles included in the bids submitted, while ULA has offered up its new Vulcan Centaur, which is tailor-made for the job but not yet certified and flight-proven, and the others are still seeking certification.

“SpaceX means to serve as the Air Force’s long-term provider for space launch, offering existing, certified and proven launch systems capable of carrying out the full spectrum of national security space launch missions and requirements,” said SpaceX COO and President Gwynne Shotwell in an emailed statement, regarding this new bid.

SpaceX clearly sees its Falcon launch system as a key competitive advantage, since it’s flying currently for USAF and national security missions – the company says that this represents the lowest risk for the government overall in terms of providers for this mission, and with known costs as well.

The Air Force will make its final selection about the two winning providers in 2020.

German auto industry giant Bosch is developing new technology that will add glasses-free 3D imaging to future versions of its in-car digital display technology. These 3D displays use passive 3D tech, which mans you won’t need to wear glasses to see the effect, and it also skips eye tracking, which is a key ingredient for most high-quality glasses-free 3D displays today.

Going glasses-free, and not requiring that a viewer look from a very specific position are both key ingredients for successfully bring 3D display tech to cars – for obvious reasons. A driver needs to be focused on the road, and the fundamental guiding principle for all Curren in-car display tech is that they provide easy-to-grasp information at a glance, so that a driver’s focus stays exactly where it should.

But why would a driver even want 3D visual effects in their instrument panel or infotainment display? Well, Bosch says that there are multiple compelling reasons, including making sure that crucial alerts really pop-out when they need to in an attention-catching way. Plus, parking cameras can present even more accurate 3D views to the driver so they really get a sense of the space they’re working with. And during navigation, guidance can offer 3D representations of where and when to turn, which can eliminate questions around whether that next corner really is the right corner you’re looking for.

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That’s all stuff that could be beneficial now, but it’s also a bet on a future where vehicles are autonomous at least part of the time, and in-car immersive displays could be even more of an opportunity to entertain and inform passengers while they’re ferried to their destinations.

Bosch says that part of the reason they can do this now, compared to in the past, is that more powerful mobile computing has changed the game for what they can build. Instead of having essentially a myriad of tiny, cheap underpowered controllers scattered throughout a car’s tech stack, automakers are generally moving towards having one centralized computer that’s plenty more powerful, and that can be updated easily and quickly over-the-air.

The company doesn’t say when we’ll see these systems actually in use through their automaker customers in shipping cars, but especially in the high end where premium distinguishing features can make all the difference, it shouldn’t be long before some carmaker takes the plunge.

China’s EHang, a company focused on developing and deploying autonomous passenger and freight low-altitude vehicles, will build out its first operational network of air taxis and transports in Guangzhou. The company announced that the Chinese city would play host to its pilot location for a citywide deployment.

The pilot will focus on not only showing that a low-altitude, rotor-powered aircraft makes sense for use in cities, but that a whole network of them can operate autonomously in concert, controlled and monitored by a central traffic management hub that Ehang will develop together with the local Guangzhou government.

Ehang, which was chosen at the beginning of this year by China’s Civil Aviation Administration as the sole pilot company to be able to build out autonomous flying passenger vehicle services, has already demonstrated flights of its Ehang 184 vehicles carrying passengers in Vienna earlier this year, and ran a number of flights in Guangzhou in 2018 as well.

In addition to developing the air traffic control system to ensure that these operate safely as a fleet working in the air above city at the same time, Ehang will be working with Guangzhou to build out the infrastructure needed to operate the network. The plan for the pilot is to use the initial stages to continue to test out the vehicles, as well as the vertiports it’ll need to support their operation, and then it’ll work with commercial partners for good transportation first.

The benefits of such a network will be especially valuable for cities like Guangzhou, where rapid growth has led to plenty of traffic and high density at the ground level. It could also potentially have advantages over a network of autonomous cars or wheeled vehicles, since those still have to contend with ground traffic, pedestrians, cyclists and other vehicles in order to operate, while the low-altitude air above a city is more or less unoccupied.

The United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint-effort commercial launch service provider set up by Boing and Lockheed Martin, succeeded in launching a U.S. Air Force communications satellite to orbit today, the fifth in a series of launches to form a constellation. The satellite, code-named AEHF-5 (for the fifth ‘Advanced Extremely High Frequency” spacecraft) is already communicating with USAF on the ground, indicating full mission success.

For ULA, this is another win in an unbroken streak – it’s the 90th Atlas V launch to date, with 100% success across all those launches. The launch took off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 6:13 AM ET this morning, marking the second successful launch from the Cape this week after SpaceX launched the AMOS-17 satellite earlier this week.

The Atlas V for this mission was flying in what ULA terms “551” configuration, which means that it’s equipped with five solid rocket boosters surrounding its liquid-fuelled center core booster. This is the configuration that provides Atlas V with the most lift and payload capacity, which was necessary in this case because of the weight of the AEHF-5 satellite at nearly 14,000 lbs, combined with its target orbit.

Lockheed Martin built the AEHF-5 for the Air Force, and confirmed via email this afternoon that it not only achieved geostationary transfer obit but is responding as planned to the USAF’s 4th Space Operations Squadron. The company has built all five current active AEHF satellites in operation, and is currently working on the sixth, which should launch sometime next year if all goes to plan.

Google is launching a beta of its augmented reality walking directions feature for Google Maps, with a broader launch that will be available to all iOS and Android devices that have system-level support for AR. On iOS, that means ARKit-compatible devices, and on Android, that means any smartphones that support Google’s ARcore, so long as ‘Street View’ is also available where you are.

Originally revealed earlier this year, Google Maps’ augmented reality feature has been available in an early alpha mode to both Google Pixel users and to Google Maps Local Guides, but starting today it’ll be rolling out to everyone (this might take a couple weeks depending on when you actually get pushed the update). We took a look at some of the features available with the early version in March, and it sounds like the version today should be pretty similar, including the ability to just tap on any location nearby in Maps, tap the ‘Directions’ button and then navigating to ‘Walking,’ then tapping ‘Live View’ which should appear newer the bottom of the screen.

The Live View feature isn’t designed with the idea that you’ll hold up your phone continually as you walk – instead, in provides quick, easy and super useful orientation, by showing you arrows and big, readable street markers overlaid on the real scene in front of you. That makes it much, much easier to orient yourself in unfamiliar settings, which is hugely beneficial when traveling in unfamiliar territory.

Google Maps is also getting a number of other upgrades, including a one-stop ‘Reservations’ tab in Maps for all your stored flights, hotel stays and more – plus it’s backed up offline. This, and a new redesigned Timeline which is airing on Android devices only for now, should also be rolling out to everyone over the next few weeks.

FedEx is ending a partnership with Amazon to supply the ecommerce company with ground delivery shipping after its current contract ends this month, the company confirmed to Bloomberg. This is the second contract FedEx has allowed to end without renewal with Amazon, following a similar decision in June that covered only Express air shipments.

The new contract termination is more significant than the earlier one, in that it means FedEx will not be providing any last-mile delivery service for Amazon, the largest online retailer, in addition to its less sizeable Express air freight. FedEx previously said that Amazon actually makes up less than 1.3 percent of the shipper’s total revenue, as measured over the year that ended on December 31, 2018.

Amazon is expanding its own shipping capabilities considerably, adding more aircraft to its fleet, and deploying ground-based wheeled delivery robots for last-mile package transportation. The ecommerce giant also recently began its own Delivery Service Partner program to fund and support delivery startup businesses that can help address its need for logistics. It has increasingly relied on its own contracted last-mile delivery services in recent years, and also allocates more of this business to both UPS and USPS than to FedEx even outside its other offerings.

FedEx did explicitly point out that its Express contract ending had no impact on other aspects of its relationship with Amazon at the time, noting that its international and “other” business units (including ground) weren’t affected. The company also says it’s looking to capitalize on the demand for ecommerce outside of Amazon, and building its network intentionally to “serve thousands of retailers in the e-commerce space.”

Gogoro, the Taiwanese electric vehicle company, has announced its first manufacturing partners. Yamaha, Aeon Motor and PGO will all launch new scooters this summer that run on Gogoro’s swappable batteries and charging infrastructure.

This means consumers who like Gogoro’s battery system will have a choice between buying Gogoro’s own scooters or scooters from its three partners. All scooters that use Gogoro’s energy network can exchange batteries at the 1,300 GoStations currently in Taiwan.

Beyond its own electric scooters, Gogoro sees its technology, most of which is developed in-house, as an open platform for electric vehicles, with the goal of reducing pollution in cities with heavy traffic. It recently launched a ride-sharing platform that can be used as a white-label solution by companies that want to launch their own electric scooter sharing program (Gogoro’s scooters are already use by Coup, the European ride-sharing startup).

For a deeper look into the company’s origins and plans, Extra Crunch subscribers can read a recently published interview with Gogoro co-founder and CEO Horace Luke.

SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 first-stage that had previously served two missions in July and November of 2018, today carrying its final payload, the AMOS-17 satellite for Spacecomm. SpaceX had configured the Falcon 9 in its ‘expendable mode’ for this mission, which means it made use of all available fuel on board to carry the 14,000+ lb satellite to orbit, without enough left over to come back in a controlled descent and landing.

A service life of three full missions is nothing to sneeze at, however, and definitely helps SpaceX save some costs on each of the missions flown by this flight-proven rocket booster. Meanwhile, everything looks to have gone to plan in terms of the AMOS-17 mission parameters, too. So far, the multi-purpose geostationary communications satellite, which will provide mobile, streaming and video connectivity across parts of the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, has reached geostationary transfer orbit and is gearing up for its next burn to raise it to its target deployment orbit. We’ll update this post once it reaches that spot to confirm successful deployment.

SpaceX will attempt to recover the fairing used to protect the cargo as it ascends to space tonight – it’ll try to catch one half in a giant net strung across support structures on ‘Ms. Tree,’ a ship operated by SpaceX specifically for this purpose. The other half will fall into the ocean, and SpaceX will try to collect that half as well, using a second ship it has for that purpose. We’ll also update the post once we find out if that attempt has been successful.

SpaceX has recovered a fairing half using the net mounted on ‘Ms. Tree’ previously – it caught a fairing used in its last Falcon Heavy launch in June.

Developing…

Private rocket launch startup and SpaceX competitor Rocket Lab made a big announcement today: It’ll be looking to re-use the first stage of its Electron rockets, returning them to Earth with a controlled landing after they make their initial trip to orbit with the payload on board. The landing sequence will be different from SpaceX’s however: They’ll attempt to catch the returned first stage mid-air using a helicopter.

That’s in part because, as Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck told a crowd when announcing the news today, the company is”not doing a propulsive re-entry” and “we’re not doing a propulsive landing,” and instead will leach off its immense speed upon return to Earth through a turnaround burn in space before releasing a parachute to slow it down enough for a helicopter to catch it.

There are a number of steps required to get to that point, but already, Rocket Lab has been looking to measure all the data it needs to ensure this is possible through its last few launches. It’s upgrading the instrumentation for its eighth flight to gather yet more data, and then on flight 10 it’ll have the rocket splash down into the ocean to recover that rocket for even more learning. Then, during a flight to be determined later (Beck is unwilling to put a number on it at this stage) they’ll try to actually bring one down in good enough shape to reuse it.

As for why, there’s a clear advantage to being able to re-fly rockets, and it’s a simple one to understand when you realize that there’s huge amount of demand for commercial launches.

“The fundamental reason we’re doing this is launch frequency,” Beck said. “Even if I can get the stage done once, I can effectively double production ratio.”

Beck also added that the biggest difficulty will be braking the rocket’s speed as it returns to Earth – a feat next to which he said the actual mid-air capture of the Electron via helicopter is actually pretty easy, from his POV as an amateur helicopter pilot in training.

Rocket Lab has an HQ in Huntington Beach, California and its own private launch site in New Zealand, was founded in 2006 by Beck. The company has been test launching its orbital Electron rocket since 2017, and serving customers commercially since 2018. It also intends to launch from Virginia in the U.S. starting in 2019.

The company revealed its Photon satellite platform earlier this year, which would allow small satellite operators to focus on their specific service and use the off-the-shelf Photon design to skip the step of actually designing and building the satellite itself.

Amazon’s Scout six-wheeled, sidewalk driving delivery robots have begun doing deliveries in Southern California, to customers in the Irvine area. Amazon announced this first California deployment of Scout bots in a blog post, noting that in its experience to date, the company has had plenty of opportunity to experience a range of weather conditions in its first deployments in the Pacific Northwest in Seattle – so weather-wise at least, the little blue bot should have a smoother time in sunny CA.

There are only a “small number” of the robots currently deployed, so even if you’re an Irvine resident, don’t necessarily expect to get a glimpse of one just yet. But they will be making their way to customer homes “during daylight hours,” Monday to Friday, per Amazon. They’ll be sent out at random for orders placed by customers through Amazon as usual, regardless of what delivery option you select.

While the robots can drive themselves around, which is the whole point of the project to begin with, for the time being they’ll be accompanied by an ‘Amazon Scout Ambassador .’ These Amazon staff are part diplomat, part research associate for the project, answering questions from people in the neighborhood and also taking note of their reactions. Robots aren’t yet actually interacting with people too much on a daily basis, especially out in the world, so a key part of rolling them out commercially is studying how people interact with them, and think about how those interactions might be altered or improved.

A lot of thought went into the initial Scout design, both in terms of making sure it’s able to survive the many miles it traverses during a day, and in coming up with a design that looks and feels at once approachable but also somewhat bland, so as to quickly evolve from novelty to standard neighborhood background scenery.

Self-driving startup Optimus Ride will become the first to operate a commercial self-driving service in the state of New York – in Brooklyn. But don’t expect these things to be contending with pedestrians, bike riders, taxis and cars on New York’s busiest roads; instead, they’ll be offering shuttle services within Brooklyn Navy Yards, a 300-acre private commercial development.

The Optimus Ride autonomous vehicles, which have six seats across three rows for passengers, and which also always have both a safety driver and another Optimus staff observer on board, at least for now, will offer service seven days a week, for free, running a service loop that will cover the entire complex. It includes a stop at a new ferry landing on-site, which means a lot of commuters should be able to pretty easily grab a seat in one for their last-mile needs.

Optimus Ride’s shuttles have been in operation in a number of different sites across the U.S., including in Boston, Virginia, California and Massachusetts.

The Brooklyn Navy Yards is a perfect environment for the service, since it plays host to some 10,000 workers, but also includes entirely private roads – which means Optimus Ride doesn’t need to worry about public road rules and regulations in deploying a commercial self-driving service.

May Mobility, an Ann Arbor-based startup also focused on low-speed autonomous shuttles, has deployed in partnership with some smaller cities and on defined bus route paths. The approach of both companies is similar, using relatively simple vehicle designs and serving low-volume ridership in areas where traffic and pedestrian patterns are relatively easy to anticipate.

Commercially viable, fully autonomous robotaxi service for dense urban areas is still a long, long way off – and definitely out of reach for startup and smaller companies in the near-term. Tackling commercial service in controlled environments on a smaller scale is a great way to build the business while bringing in revenue and offering actual value to paying customers at the same time.

SpaceX is expanding its launch offerings with a new, more affordable and consistent option for small satellite operators looking to but lighter payloads into orbit. The new service offering is designed to work for customers who can take advantage of a ‘rideshare’ launch, sharing space on a Falcon 9 with other small satellites being sent up.

The rideshare option will be offered on a regular, defined schedule, and SpaceX says that it’s designs for flexibility, offering customers the ability to pre-book a spot, and ensuring that if they’re ready to launch when their rideshare comes up, the rocket will indeed go up – with or without other payloads also booked that may not be ready in time.

One of the biggest issues with rideshare missions today is being reliant on the timing and readiness of the main payload customer. Typically, one or two big-ticket payloads foots most of the bill for the launch, even if there are smaller satellites also going up on the same ride. The issue is that if that large customer has to delay for any reason, the smallsat ride-alongs are basically at their whims.

SpaceX’s new service is designed somewhat like rideshare programs here on Earth: Passengers who are ready get to ride, and the company looks to intend to fill seats by offering bookings both in advance (12 or more months out) and much closer to launch time (between 12 and 6 months out) with a possibility of even tighter turnaround, though SpaceX hasn’t publicly posted pricing for that option which means it’ll probably be costly.

As for those with plenty of notice, they get the biggest price break: Launches start at just $2.25 million for payloads of up to 150 kg (330 lbs), or at $4.5 million for those weighing up to 300 kg (660 lbs). That sounds like a lot, but consider that the lowest cost for a current SpaceX launch is currently somewhere around $57 million.

The customers are responsibly for providing the deployer, which must be compatible with an ESPA adapter (pretty standard for payload launches on spacecraft) and they also could be responsible for a rebooking fee, should they cancel their launch close to its intended take-off date. Delays don’t mean you lose the whole cost of launch, however – because SpaceX is looking to employ a flexible model, it says that anyone who is delayed “can apply 100 percent of monies paid towards the cost of rebooking on a subsequent mission.”

This is a clever way to drum up more business for SpaceX. Based on all the conversations I’ve had with space tech startups and people working in the industry, the main cap right now on activities is securing launch services. By addressing this bottleneck, and doing so in a way that offers as much flexibility as you can when dealing with rocket launches, the company could potentially capture a lot more of the commercial space business revenue it’s currently leaving on the table.