If you’re used to hopping between gaming servers, sharing memes, or catching up with friends on Discord, be ready for a small twist in how the platform works. Starting March 2026, Discord will introduce a global age verification system that automatically places every user into a “teen-appropriate experience” until they prove they’re an adult. To fully unlock age-restricted content and certain features, users will need to verify their age via face-based AI estimation or a government-issued ID.
Discord
According to Discord’s official announcement, this change is part of a broader safety push to control access to adult or graphic material and comply with international safety expectations. But before you panic that Discord is turning into a DMV, it’s worth noting what changes and what stays the same, if you don’t verify right away.
What works and what doesn’t without age verification
Under Discord’s upcoming teen-by-default setup, everyday features won’t suddenly vanish. Users can still send messages, chat in most regular servers and DMs, hop into voice calls with friends, and hang out in their usual gaming communities just like before.
Discord
However, anything marked as adult or age-restricted will stay locked behind a verification wall. That includes access to certain servers and channels, speaking privileges in Stage channels, and viewing unfiltered or sensitive content, which will remain blurred by default. Some message request controls and notification customizations may also stay limited until age verification is completed, meaning full access only unlocks once you confirm you’re old enough.
Discord knows this move isn’t going to earn universal applause. Any time an app asks for a face scan or ID, a few users are bound to hit the exit button instead. Still, the company says the bigger picture is safety first, aiming to set a more secure, teen-friendly default for everyone rather than letting the wild west stay wild.
Discord
The good news is your everyday Discord life isn’t getting kicked from the party. DMs, regular servers, and voice chats with the squad will keep humming along. But if you want the full, no-filters version of Discord, complete with adult servers, spicy memes, and every corner of your late-night gaming hangouts, you’ll have to show you’re old enough to enter. Think of it less like a ban and more like a digital bouncer asking for ID at the door.
Step, which raised half a billion in funding and has grown to over 7 million users, offers financial services geared toward Gen Z to help them build credit, save money, and invest. The company has attracted celebrity investors like Charli D’Amelio, Will Smith, The Chainsmokers, and Stephen Curry, in addition to venture firms like General Catalyst, Coatue, and the payments company Stripe.
If the company wants to continue getting its fintech product in front of young eyes, then partnering with Gen Z phenom MrBeast is wise. MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, is the most-subscribed creator on YouTube, with over 466 million subscribers, but his ambitions stretch beyond his over-the-top videos.
“Nobody taught me about investing, building credit, or managing money when I was growing up,” the 27-year-old said. “I want to give millions of young people the financial foundation I never had.”
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I’m so excited to share that we are acquiring the financial services app, @step
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This acquisition makes sense, considering that a leaked pitch document from last year showed this was an area of interest for Beast Industries. The company is also reportedly interested in launching a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), a lower-cost cell phone plan similar to Ryan Reynolds’ Mint Mobile.
In line with other top creators, Beast Industries’ business is much more than YouTube ad revenue. (In fact, the company reinvests much of that money back into the content.) The company’s cash cow is the chocolate brand Feastables, which is more profitable than both the MrBeast YouTube channel and the Prime Video show “Beast Games,” according to leaked documents reported on by Bloomberg. Some of his other ventures, like Lunchly and MrBeast Burger, have struggled.
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“We’re excited about how this acquisition is going to amplify our platform and bring more groundbreaking products to Step customers,” Step founder and CEO CJ MacDonald said in a statement.
Meet the recipients of the 2026 IEEE Medals—the organization’s highest-level honors. Presented on behalf of the IEEE Board of Directors, these medals recognize innovators whose work has shaped modern technology across disciplines including AI, education, and semiconductors.
“For seminal contributions to compound semiconductor optoelectronics, including high-efficiency visible light-emitting diodes, lasers, and LED displays.”
“For pioneering parallel computing architectures and leadership in semiconductor design that transformed artificial intelligence, scientific research, and accelerated computing.”
“For contributions to database query languages, particularly Structured Query Language, which powers most of the world’s data management and analysis systems.”
According to a report in FlatPanelsHD, Disney+ users throughout Europe are apparently reporting the loss of Dolby Vision and HDR10+ dynamic HDR formats on 4K video content streamed on the Disney+ service. Titles that previously streamed in 4K resolution with either Dolby Vision or HDR10+ dynamic HDR are now streaming in basic HDR10 static HDR instead. Disney+ users in Germany first started seeing the lack of Dolby Vision as early as December, 2025 and reports have spread since then to other European countries.
As of February 2026, Disney+ users in the United States are still able to watch select titles on the service in Dolby Vision HDR, but it remains unclear if this will continue to be true or if Disney will remove the technology from all markets. Some European customers have installed VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) to spoof their geographic location, which fools the streaming service into thinking they are streaming from the United States in order to work around the issue. To be clear, we are not suggesting that affected customers take this action; we are simply reporting what some users have stated online.
The loss of Dolby Vision comes on the heels of a German court’s ruling in a patent dispute filed by InterDigital, Inc. against Disney+. InterDigital has claimed that Disney+ is currently in violation of a patent they own related to the streaming of video content using high dynamic range (HDR) technology. The German court agreed with the validity of the claim and granted an injunction against Disney+ in November of last year to cease using the alleged infringing technology to deliver HDR content. The timing of this injunction and the first reports of disappearing Dolby Vision appear to be more than coincidental.
Why It Matters
While having four times as many pixels in 4K (UHD) content compared to 1080p HD does results in a sharper picture, it’s the wider color gamut and high dynamic range capabilities of 4K/UHD content that make video content look more lifelike and vivid. But most consumer displays, including TVs and projectors, are unable to reproduce the full dynamic range and peak brightness that is used by studios to master movies and TV shows for consumer displays. A film may be mastered for peaks of 4,000 nits while a high quality OLED display may only be able to reproduce 1,000 or possibly 2,000 nit peaks. Attempting to display content mastered for 4,000 nits on a consumer display with lower peak brightness could result in loss of specular (bright) highlights, a loss of shadow detail or both.
Dynamic HDR formats like Dolby Vision and HDR10+ allow the content’s dynamic range to be adjusted at playback time on a scene by scene basis to fit the capabilities of the display. This allows consumers to see a better representation of the content creators’ “artistic intent” regardless of whether they’re watching on a DLP projector, an OLED TV or a MiniLED/LCD TV. By eliminating the dynamic HDR content options, Disney+ could be creating an inferior viewing experience for their customers, even though these customers are paying for a “premium” streaming experience.
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When contacted for comment, a source at the company had this to add:
“Dolby Vision support for Disney+ content in several European countries is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We are actively exploring ways to restore it and will provide updates as soon as we can. 4K UHD and HDR support remain available on supported devices. HDR10+ has not ever been available in market in Europe to date, we expect it to be available soon.”
The Bottom Line
From Disney’s response, it appears that the company is aware of the issue and is attempting to deliver a solution to their customers. In the meantime, affected users can still access this content in 4K resolution with standard HDR10 HDR. And on TVs with good HDR tone mapping processing, results with HDR10 can be quite high quality. Still, there are many fans out there of Dolby Vision, and many TVs that do support Dolby Vision, but do not support HDR10+ nor have their own dynamic HDR tone mapping. We’re sure these customers would like to see Dolby Vision support restored in order to get the highest possible visual quality of their streamed content.
Today, Meta went to trial in the state of New Mexico for allegedly failing to protect minors from sexual exploitation on its apps, including Facebook and Instagram. The state claims that Meta violated New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act by implementing design features and algorithms that created dangerous conditions for users. Now, more than two years after the case was filed, opening arguments have begun in Santa Fe.
It’s a big week for Meta in court: A landmark social media trial kicks off in California today as well, the nation’s first legal test of social media addiction. That case is part of a “JCCP”, or judicial council coordinated proceedings, that brings together many civil suits that focus on similar issues.
The plaintiffs in that case allege that social media companies designed their products in a negligent manner and caused various harms to minors using their apps. Snap, TikTok, and Google were named as defendants alongside Meta; Snap and TikTok have already settled. The fact that Meta has not means that some of the company’s top executives may be called to the witness stand in the coming weeks.
Meta executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, are not likely to testify live in the New Mexico trial. But the proceedings may still be noteworthy for a few reasons. It’s the first standalone, state-led case against Meta that has actually gone to trial in the US. It’s also a highly charged case alleging child sexual exploitation that will ultimately lean on very technical arguments, including what it means to “mislead” the public, how algorithmic amplification works on social media, and what protections Meta and other social media platforms have through Section 230.
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And, while Meta’s top brass might not be required to appear in person, executive depositions and testimonies from other witnesses could still offer an interesting look at the inner workings of the company as it established policies around underage users and responded to complaints that claim it wasn’t doing enough to protect them.
Meta has so far given no indication that it plans to settle. The company has denied the allegations, and Meta spokesperson Aaron Simpson told WIRED previously, “While New Mexico makes sensationalist, irrelevant and distracting arguments, we’re focused on demonstrating our longstanding commitment to supporting young people…We’re proud of the progress we’ve made, and we’re always working to do better.”
Sacha Haworth, executive director of The Tech Oversight Project, a tech industry watchdog, said in an emailed statement that these two trials represent “the split screen of Mark Zuckerberg’s nightmares: a landmark trial in Los Angeles over addicting children to Facebook and Instagram, and a trial in New Mexico exposing how Meta enabled predators to use social media to exploit and abuse kids.”
“These are the trials of a generation,” Haworth added. “Just as the world watched courtrooms hold Big Tobacco and Big Pharma accountable, we will, for the first time, see Big Tech CEOs like Zuckerberg take the stand.”
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The Cost of Doing Business
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez filed his complaint against Meta in December 2023. In it, he alleged that Meta proactively served underage users explicit content, enabled adults to exploit children on the platform, allowed Facebook and Instagram users to easily find child pornography, and allowed an investigator on the case, purporting to be a mother, to offer her underage daughter to sex traffickers.
The trial is expected to take place over seven weeks. Last week jurors were selected, a panel of 10 women and eight men (12 jurors and six alternates). New Mexico First Judicial District Judge Bryan Biedscheid is presiding over the case.
Seedance 2.0 says it generates ‘cinematic content’ with ‘seamless video extension and natural language control’.
TikTok parent company ByteDance launched the pre-release version of its new AI video model, called Seedance 2.0, over the weekend, sparking value growth of shares in Chinese AI firms.
Seedance 2.0 markets itself as a “true” multi-modal AI creator, allowing users to combine images, videos, audio and text to generate “cinematic content” with “precise reference capabilities, seamless video extension and natural language control”. The model is currently available to select users of Jimeng AI, ByteDance’s AI video platform.
The new Seedance model allows exporting in 2k with 30pc faster generation than the previous version 1.5, the company’s website read.
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Swiss-based consultancy CTOL called it the “most advanced AI video generation model available”, “surpassing OpenAI’s Sora 2 and Google’s Veo 3.1 in practical testing”.
Positive response to the Seedance 2.0 launch drove up shares in Chinese AI firms.
Data compiled by Bloomberg earlier today (9 February) showed publishing company COL Group Co hit its 20pc daily price ceiling, while Shanghai Film Co and gaming and entertainment firm Perfect World Co rose by 10pc. Meanwhile, the Shanghai Shenzhen CSI 300 Index is up by 1.63pc at the time of publishing.
Consumer AI video generators have made leaps in advances in just a short period of time. The usual tells – blurry fingers, overly smooth and unrealistic skin and inexplainable changes from frame to frame – in AI videos are all becoming extremely hard to notice.
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While rivalling AI video generator Sora 2 by OpenAI produces results with watermarks (although, there’s no shortage of tutorials on how to remove them), and Google’s Veo 3.1 comes with a metadata watermark called SynthID, Seedance boasts that its results are “completely watermark-free”.
The prevalence of advanced AI tools coupled with ease of access has opened the gates to a new wave of AI deepfakes, with the likes of xAI’s Grok at the centre of the issue.
Last month, the EU launched a new investigation into X to probe whether the Elon Musk-owned social media site properly assessed and mitigated risks stemming from its in-platform AI chatbot Grok after it was outfitted with the ability to edit images.
Users on the social media site quickly prompted the tool to undress people – generally women and children – in images and videos. Millions of such pieces of content were generated on X, The New York Times found.
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A Moscow-based startup has taken a big move into the area of animal-machine hybrids. Neiry, a Moscow-based neurotech company, claims to have already made progress on remotely operated pigeons by inserting electrodes into their brains.
In late 2025, there were reports of early flying tests in the city, in which the modified birds flew controlled routes before returning to base. The project is known as PJN-1, and while the company promotes it as a valuable tool for civilian occupations, this type of technology is gaining traction due to its potential for surveillance purposes.
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The surgeons utilize a specialized frame to delicately place these microscopic electrodes into specific areas of the pigeon’s brain. The electrodes are then linked to a mini-stimulator on the bird’s head. All of the bird’s electronics and navigation system are housed inside a lightweight backpack and powered by solar panels. A tiny camera is mounted on the bird’s chest to capture video. The operators can direct the bird to fly left or right by giving electrical signals to its brain. GPS devices, like a standard drone, track the bird’s location and control its trajectory. According to Neiry, the bird does not require training and may be operated immediately after the process, and the surgery has been reported to be 100% successful in terms of survival rate.
Pigeons have some significant advantages over regular drones in certain scenarios. For starters, they can fly hundreds of miles, perhaps 300 or more in a single day, without having to replace batteries or land frequently. They can simply navigate difficult environments, handle anything the weather throws at them, and even fit into small spaces. Neiry believes they can use pigeons to inspect pipelines or electrical lines, survey industrial regions, or assist with search and rescue efforts in difficult-to-reach areas. According to the company’s inventor, Alexander Panov, the same technology may be used with various birds, such as ravens for coastal monitoring, seagulls, or even albatrosses for operations over the ocean, as long as they can carry the burden and fly the distance required. [Source]
A team of researchers led by Nvidia has released DreamDojo, a new AI system designed to teach robots how to interact with the physical world by watching tens of thousands of hours of human video — a development that could significantly reduce the time and cost required to train the next generation of humanoid machines.
The research, published this month and involving collaborators from UC Berkeley, Stanford, the University of Texas at Austin, and several other institutions, introduces what the team calls “the first robot world model of its kind that demonstrates strong generalization to diverse objects and environments after post-training.”
At the core of DreamDojo is what the researchers describe as “a large-scale video dataset” comprising “44k hours of diverse human egocentric videos, the largest dataset to date for world model pretraining.” The dataset, called DreamDojo-HV, is a dramatic leap in scale — “15x longer duration, 96x more skills, and 2,000x more scenes than the previously largest dataset for world model training,” according to the project documentation.
A simulated robot places a cup into a cardboard box in a workshop setting, one of thousands of scenarios DreamDojo can model after training on 44,000 hours of human video. (Credit: Nvidia)
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Inside the two-phase training system that teaches robots to see like humans
The system operates in two distinct phases. First, DreamDojo “acquires comprehensive physical knowledge from large-scale human datasets by pre-training with latent actions.” Then it undergoes “post-training on the target embodiment with continuous robot actions” — essentially learning general physics from watching humans, then fine-tuning that knowledge for specific robot hardware.
For enterprises considering humanoid robots, this approach addresses a stubborn bottleneck. Teaching a robot to manipulate objects in unstructured environments traditionally requires massive amounts of robot-specific demonstration data — expensive and time-consuming to collect. DreamDojo sidesteps this problem by leveraging existing human video, allowing robots to learn from observation before ever touching a physical object.
One of the technical breakthroughs is speed. Through a distillation process, the researchers achieved “real-time interactions at 10 FPS for over 1 minute” — a capability that enables practical applications like live teleoperation and on-the-fly planning. The team demonstrated the system working across multiple robot platforms, including the GR-1, G1, AgiBot, and YAM humanoid robots, showing what they call “realistic action-conditioned rollouts” across “a wide range of environments and object interactions.”
Why Nvidia is betting big on robotics as AI infrastructure spending soars
The release comes at a pivotal moment for Nvidia’s robotics ambitions — and for the broader AI industry. At the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, CEO Jensen Huang declared that AI robotics represents a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity, particularly for regions with strong manufacturing bases. According to Digitimes, Huang has also stated that the next decade will be “a critical period of accelerated development for robotics technology.”
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The financial stakes are enormous. Huang told CNBC’s “Halftime Report” on February 6 that the tech industry’s capital expenditures — potentially reaching $660 billion this year from major hyperscalers — are “justified, appropriate and sustainable.” He characterized the current moment as “the largest infrastructure buildout in human history,” with companies like Meta, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft dramatically increasing their AI spending.
That infrastructure push is already reshaping the robotics landscape. Robotics startups raised a record $26.5 billion in 2025, according to data from Dealroom. European industrial giants including Siemens, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo have announced robotics partnerships in the past year, while Tesla CEO Elon Musk has claimed that 80 percent of his company’s future value will come from its Optimus humanoid robots.
How DreamDojo could transform enterprise robot deployment and testing
For technical decision-makers evaluating humanoid robots, DreamDojo’s most immediate value may lie in its simulation capabilities. The researchers highlight downstream applications including “reliable policy evaluation without real-world deployment and model-based planning for test-time improvement” — capabilities that could let companies simulate robot behavior extensively before committing to costly physical trials.
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This matters because the gap between laboratory demonstrations and factory floors remains significant. A robot that performs flawlessly in controlled conditions often struggles with the unpredictable variations of real-world environments — different lighting, unfamiliar objects, unexpected obstacles. By training on 44,000 hours of diverse human video spanning thousands of scenes and nearly 100 distinct skills, DreamDojo aims to build the kind of general physical intuition that makes robots adaptable rather than brittle.
The research team, led by Linxi “Jim” Fan, Joel Jang, and Yuke Zhu, with Shenyuan Gao and William Liang as co-first authors, has indicated that code will be released publicly, though a timeline was not specified.
The bigger picture: Nvidia’s transformation from gaming giant to robotics powerhouse
Whether DreamDojo translates into commercial robotics products remains to be seen. But the research signals where Nvidia’s ambitions are heading as the company increasingly positions itself beyond its gaming roots. As Kyle Barr observed at Gizmodo earlier this month, Nvidia now views “anything related to gaming and the ‘personal computer’” as “outliers on Nvidia’s quarterly spreadsheets.”
The shift reflects a calculated bet: that the future of computing is physical, not just digital. Nvidia has already invested $10 billion in Anthropic and signaled plans to invest heavily in OpenAI’s next funding round. DreamDojo suggests the company sees humanoid robots as the next frontier where its AI expertise and chip dominance can converge.
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For now, the 44,000 hours of human video at the heart of DreamDojo represent something more fundamental than a technical benchmark. They represent a theory — that robots can learn to navigate our world by watching us live in it. The machines, it turns out, have been taking notes.
Waymo has pulled the human safety driver from its autonomous test vehicles in Nashville, as the Alphabet-owned company moves closer to launching a robotaxi service in the city.
Waymo, which has been testing in Nashville for months, is slated to launch a robotaxi service there this year in partnership with Lyft. Riders will initially hail rides directly through the Waymo app. Once the service expands, Waymo will also make its self-driving vehicles available through the Lyft app. Lyft has said it will handle fleet services, such as vehicle readiness and maintenance, charging infrastructure, and depot operations, through its wholly owned subsidiary Flexdrive.
Waymo has accelerated its robotaxi expansion and today operates commercial services in Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Phoenix. It also has driverless test fleets in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando.
The company tends to follow the same rollout strategy in every new market, starting with a small fleet of vehicles that are manually driven to map the city. The autonomous vehicles are then tested with a human safety operator in the driver’s seat. Eventually, the company conducts driverless testing, often allowing employees to hail rides, before launching a robotaxi service.
An anonymous reader writes: Linus Torvalds has confirmed the next major kernel series as Linux 7.0, reports Linux news website 9to5Linux.com: “So there you have it, the Linux 6.x era has ended with today’s Linux 6.19 kernel release, and a new one will begin with Linux 7.0, which is expected in mid-April 2026. The merge window for Linux 7.0 will open tomorrow, February 9th, and the first Release Candidate (RC) milestone is expected on February 22nd, 2026.”
This cutaway view shows the interior of the Starlab space station’s laboratory. (Starlab Illustration)
How do you design a living space where there’s no up or down? That’s one of the challenges facing Teague, a Seattle-based design and innovation firm that advises space companies such as Blue Origin, Axiom Space and Voyager Technologies on how to lay out their orbital outposts.
Mike Mahoney, Teague’s senior director of space and defense programs, says the zero-gravity environment is the most interesting element to consider in space station design.
“You can’t put things on surfaces, right? You’re not going to have tables, necessarily, unless you can attach things to them, and they could be on any surface,” he told GeekWire. “So, directionality is a big factor. And knowing that opens up new opportunities. … You could have, let’s say, two scientists working in different orientations in the same area.”
Mike Mahoney is senior director of space and defense programs at Teague. (Photo via LinkedIn)
Over the next few years, NASA and its partners are expected to make the transition from the aging International Space Station to an array of commercial space stations — and Teague is helping space station builders get ready for the shift.
In the 1980s, Teague helped Boeing and NASA with their plans for Space Station Freedom, an orbital project that never got off the ground but eventually evolved into the International Space Station. Teague also partnered with NASA on a 3D-printed mockup for a Mars habitat, known as the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog.
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Nowadays, Teague is focusing on interior designs for commercial spacecraft, a business opportunity that capitalizes on the company’s traditional expertise in airplane design.
Mahoney said Teague has been working with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture on a variety of projects for more than a decade. The first project was the New Shepard suborbital rocket ship, which made its debut in 2015.
“We partnered with their engineering team to design for the astronaut experience within the New Shepard space capsule,” Mahoney said. “It’s all the interior components that you see that come together, from the linings to the lighting. We created a user experience vision for the displays as well.”
GeekWire’s Alan Boyle sits in one of the padded seats inside a mockup of the crew capsule for Blue Origin’s suborbital spaceship, on display at a space conference in 2017. The door of the capsule’s hatch is just to the right of Boyle’s head. (GeekWire File Photo / Kevin Lisota)
Teague also worked with Blue Origin on design elements for the Orbital Reef space station and the Blue Moon lunar lander. “We were involved in initial concepting for the look and feel of the vehicles,” Mahoney said. “In other cases, we designed and built mockups that were used for astronaut operations and testing. How do we navigate around the lunar lander legs? How do we optimize toolboxes on the surface of the moon?”
Other space station ventures that have benefited from Teague’s input include Axiom Space (which also brought in Philippe Starck as a big-name designer) and Starlab Space, a joint venture founded by Voyager Technologies and Airbus.
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Starlab recently unveiled a three-story mockup of its space station at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas. The mockup is built so that it can be reconfigured to reflect tweaks that designers want to make in the space station’s layout, before launch or even years after launch.
“One of the things that’s been very helpful along this development path has been working with Teague, because you have to have a really good idea on how you lay out this very large volume so that you can optimize the efficiency of the crew,” said Tim Kopra, a former NASA astronaut who now serves as chief human exploration officer at Voyager Technologies.
Kopra compared the Starlab station to a three-story condo. “The first floor is essentially like the basement of a large building that has the infrastructure,” he said, “It has our life support systems, avionics and software, the toilets, the hygiene station — which encompasses both the toilet and a cleaning station — and the workout equipment.”
The second floor serves as a laboratory and workspace, with a glovebox, freezer, centrifuge, microscope and plenty of racks and lockers for storage. “We are very focused on four different industries: semiconductors, life sciences, pharmaceuticals and materials science,” Kopra said.
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He said the third floor will be a “place that people will enjoy … because Deck 3 has our crew quarters, our galley table, our windows and a little bit more experiment capacity.”
First ever look inside Voyager Space's Starlab Space Station mockup. The space station is 17m tall & 7.7m wide, essentially a 3-story tall building, and can host 4 astronauts continuously & 8 astronauts briefly. The company hopes to launch Starlab by 2029, to replace the ISS. pic.twitter.com/BzwfjUwkmZ
The galley table is a prime example of how zero-gravity interior design differs from the earthly variety. “No chairs,” Kopra said. “Just like on the ISS, all you need is a place to hook your feet. There are little design features, like where do you put a handrail, and how tall is the table?” (He said the designers haven’t yet decided whether the table should be round or square.)
Kopra said one of his top design priorities is to use the station’s volume, and the astronauts’ time, as efficiently as possible. “Time is extremely valuable on the ISS. They calculate that crew time is worth about $135,000 per hour,” he said. “Ours will be a fraction of that, but it really illustrates how important it is to be efficient with the time on board.”
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Starlab is laid out to maximize efficiency. “We have a really cool design where the middle has a hatchway that goes all the way through the three stories,” he said. “So, imagine if it were a fire station, you’d have a pole that went from floor to floor. We don’t need a fire pole. We can just translate through that area.”
Mahoney said human-centered design will be more important for commercial space stations than it was for the ISS.
“In the past, space stations have been primarily designed for professionally trained, military background astronauts,” he said. “Now we’ll have different folks in there. … How do we think about how researchers and scientists will be using these spaces? How do we think about non-professional private astronauts? As the International Space Station gets retired, how do these companies step in to fill the void, serving NASA but also a lot of these new customers?”
A three-story mockup of the Starlab space station has been installed inside a building at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas. (Starlab Photo)
An interior view of the Starlab mockup highlights the large observation windows and emergency equipment. (Starlab Photo)
The Internal Payload Laboratory inside the Starlab mockup features a glovebox, cold stowage, an optical bench and a workbench. (Starlab Photo)
Level 3 of the Starlab mockup includes the crew quarters, galley and Earth viewing areas. Starlab Space’s partners include Hilton and Journey, the team behind the Sphere in Las Vegas. (Starlab Photo)
When will commercial space stations step in? The answer to that question is up in the air.
But NASA has been slow to follow through on the revised plan, sparking concern in Congress. Late last month, the space agency said it was still working to “align acquisition timelines with national space policy and broader operational objectives.” Now some lawmakers are calling on NASA to reconsider its plan to deorbit the ISS in the 2030-2031 time frame.
The timetable for the space station transition may be in flux, but Mahoney and other space station designers are staying the course — and taking the long view.
“We may not know right now how the space station is going to be used 20 years from now,” Mahoney said. “How do we start to future-proof and create a system within that’s modular and flexible, so that we can add technologies and add systems, or we can configure in different ways? … Those are the kinds of things that we’re thinking about designing for.”
