The big picture: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has joined forces with former Apple engineer Alex Fielding to launch a private space company. Based on what little we know about the company thus far, it seems as if the startup is all about space sustainability.
Privateer Space aims to keep space safe and accessible to all humankind. In a teaser video on YouTube, the firm mentions “taking care of what we have so the next generation can be better together.” In announcing the startup on Twitter, Wozniak said the company will be “unlike the others.”
So, what does it all mean?
Taken at face value, one could assume that this is simply another private space company in the same category as Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic or SpaceX. But, the wording used in the video and Wozniak’s own admission that it’s unlike the others seems to suggest otherwise.
On Twitter, Fielding said he was thrilled to be part of the AMOS conference in Hawaii this week. For the uninitiated, the AMOS conference is described as the top scientific conference in the field of space situational awareness / space domain awareness. Indeed, seems that Privateer Space is all about space sustainability.
In a press release from August, a company called Desktop Metal referenced Privateer Space, calling it a satellite company focused on monitoring and cleaning up objects in space.
Wozniak and Fielding have worked together previously. Back in 2002, the two founded a company called Wheels of Zeus that developed GPS-based tracking tags. The firm’s tech was licensed by Motorola in 2004 but the company shut down a couple of years later and sold its assets to ZonTrak.
The AMOS conference runs from September 14 through the 17th in Maui.
Masthead credit Pixabay
https://www.techspot.com/news/91224-steve-wozniak-latest-startup-monitor-clean-up-space.html
