Evening Edition No. 10
AST SpaceMobile Will Build Its Own Rocket With Firefly Engines, the Army Opens a $4.2 Billion Race to Build Ammunition Plants, and an AI Reads Health From the Way You Walk
Covers Thursday, November 5, 2026, 6:00 PM ET to Friday, November 6, 2026, 6:00 PM ET
AST SpaceMobile says it will build its own rocket, Blacklift, with Firefly engines in a deal of more than $1.3 billion, Thinking Machines Lab releases Inkling 2 Small, ESA's reusable Prometheus engine restarts on a new test stand, the Space Force picks Viasat to run the control room for its satellite data network, Wing plans a $125 million drone factory in Fort Worth, an AI model predicts health signs across 18 body systems from the way people walk, the Army opens a $4.17 billion contract to build new ammunition plants, the U.S. drops a plan to tighten the crypto Travel Rule, Nigeria's stablecoin rules take effect, and TSMC weighs making memory chips for Nvidia.
In 60 Seconds
- AST SpaceMobile, which builds satellites that talk straight to ordinary phones, says it will build its own rocket, using engines from Firefly Aerospace.
- An AI model watched 3,328 adults walk and predicted signs of their health across 18 body systems, from belly fat to sleep.
- The Army opened a $4.17 billion contract for 11 companies to design and build new ammunition plants over the next five years.
- The U.S. dropped a 2020 plan that would have made banks and crypto firms collect names on international transfers as small as $250.
On the Dashboard
From the people behind Singularity Nightly
Want to put AI to work in your own life? Start here is a live two-hour class on Zoom with Dennis W. Davis, Saturday, Nov. 21, 1:00 to 3:00 PM ET, for $49, and the $49 counts toward the Spring Wanderlight Workshop if you enroll by Jan. 15. Save a seat. Wanderlight Workshop is run by Wanderlight Inc, which also publishes Singularity Nightly.
Lead Signal
AST SpaceMobile will build its own rocket, Blacklift, with Firefly engines
AST SpaceMobile, a Texas company that builds huge satellites called BlueBirds that connect straight to ordinary cell phones, said Friday it will build its own rocket, named Blacklift, Payload reports. AST will buy engines from Firefly Aerospace in a deal worth more than $1.3 billion: about $800 million for a license to build Firefly's Miranda and Vira engines forever at a new U.S. factory ($400 million in cash plus 10 million to 14 million shares), $250 million for the engines for the first 3 rockets, and $250 million over 3 years for engineering help, Via Satellite reports. The first 3 rockets get 27 Miranda engines and 9 Vira engines, the version built to work in the near vacuum of space. Miranda has fired more than 175 times on the test stand, for over 4,200 seconds in all, and is rated at 230,000 pounds of thrust, Yahoo Finance reports. Each Blacklift is meant to carry up to 5 BlueBirds. Why build a rocket? AST wanted 45 BlueBirds in orbit by the end of 2026, but rides have been hard to get: Blue Origin's New Glenn is grounded, and its April flight left one BlueBird in an orbit it cannot use. AST CEO Abel Avellan called Blacklift "the springboard to significantly expand our total addressable market." The first Blacklift missions are aimed at late 2028, and until then AST keeps its rides on other rockets. AST will show the rocket on Nov. 12 in New York City.
The Desks
[AI] AI Models
Thinking Machines Lab releases Inkling 2 Small and promises to share it with everyone next week
Thinking Machines Lab, the AI company started by former OpenAI leader Mira Murati, released Inkling 2 Small, a new A computer program trained on large amounts of data to recognize patterns and produce answers, text, images or actions. Chatbots such as ChatGPT and Claude run on AI models. In the Glossary, on its Tinker platform. It is a An AI model design that sends each word to only a few specialist parts of the model, so just a slice of it does the work at once and it costs less to run. In the Glossary model, which means it is built from many smaller specialist parts and only a few switch on for each word: it has 594 billion The settings an AI model learns during training. More parameters usually means a bigger, more capable model. In the Glossary, the adjustable settings an AI learns, but uses only 17 billion at a time, its model card shows. It can look at pictures, think harder when asked, and read up to 1 million A small piece of a word that an AI model reads or writes. A model's memory, or context, is measured in tokens. In the Glossary, about 750,000 words, at once. It scores 31 on the A combined score from Artificial Analysis, an independent testing company, that ranks AI models across many reasoning, knowledge, math and coding tests. Higher is better. In the Glossary, up from 13 for the model before it, and costs about $1.18 per test task, The Decoder reports. The rate of made-up answers fell from 61% to 27%, though mostly because it now declines to answer more often. In one demo, the model trained a smaller AI on its own in 4 hours 17 minutes, for $426 of a $500 budget. The lab said, "We intend to make the full The numbers an AI model learns during training. Publishing them lets anyone download the model and run it themselves. In the Glossary available under an A free software license that lets anyone use, change and sell things built on the software, as long as they keep the license notice. In the Glossary license next week," after outside safety checks. Apache 2.0 is a license that lets anyone use and change the model for free, even in a business.
[LAUNCH] Launches
Europe's reusable Prometheus engine fires and restarts on a new test stand
The European Space Agency's Prometheus engine fired up on an improved test stand at Lampoldshausen, Germany, in tests on Oct. 29 that ESA shared Friday. Prometheus burns methane and liquid oxygen, a fuel mix called Rocket fuel made of liquid methane and liquid oxygen. It burns cleanly, which helps rockets be reused. In the Glossary that leaves less soot, which makes an engine easier to fly again. It is about as powerful as the Vulcain 2.1 engine that lifts Europe's Ariane 6, and it is built to be reused. For these tests it used a new The part of a rocket engine where the fuel and oxygen burn to make hot, fast gas that pushes the rocket. In the Glossary, the part where the fuel burns, made by A way of building metal parts by blasting metal powder at very high speed so it sticks and builds up layer by layer, without melting it. In the Glossary, a way of building metal parts by blasting powder at high speed. It restarted several times without a separate high-pressure starter, which ESA calls a first in Europe for this kind of engine. ESA's Geraldine Naja said "Prometheus has validated key technologies." ESA did not say how much thrust the engine made.
[ORBIT] Satellites and Orbit
The Space Force picks Viasat to run the control room for its satellite data network
The Space Force and the The U.S. plan for a layered shield against missiles that links sensors, satellites and interceptors. In the Glossary office, which runs the U.S. plan for a layered shield against missiles, picked Viasat to build the Mission Operations Center for the Space Data Network Backbone, Breaking Defense reports. The backbone is a network of A satellite that passes signals between other spacecraft and the ground, like a cell tower in the sky, so a spacecraft can send data home without waiting to fly over a ground station. In the Glossary in The region of space from about 160 to 2,000 kilometers (100 to 1,200 miles) above Earth, where the International Space Station and most satellites fly. In the Glossary that pass messages from many military satellites and ground stations. The contract is an A government contract that sets a top value and lets the government order the work in pieces over time as it needs it. In the Glossary, a deal with a top value, here $450 million, where the government orders work in pieces as it needs it; the first order is $115 million, Space Systems Command says. The center will do three jobs: keep satellites from several companies working together, link forces on land, sea, air and space, and send the most urgent data first. If one path is crowded or jammed, it can steer data around it. Lt. Col. Alexa Eggert called it "a crucial step in maturing our Space Data Network." Amazon Leo for Government, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Rocket Lab and York worked on earlier parts.
[AIR] Air Mobility
Wing plans a $125 million drone factory in Fort Worth
Wing, the drone delivery company owned by Google's parent Alphabet, will invest up to $125 million over 2 years to build its drones in the United States, starting with a 15,000 square foot factory in Fort Worth, Texas. The factory can make tens of thousands of drones a year and bring up to 100 jobs, DroneLife reports. Wing has made more than 1 million home deliveries in the U.S. so far this year from more than 70 sites, and it aims to reach more than 40 million Americans in nearly 20 markets by 2027. In 2019 it became the first drone company to earn a The FAA's rulebook for charter and commuter flights that carry paying passengers. Air taxi companies need it to sell rides. In the Glossary, the FAA approval to carry goods for pay like an airline. Wing CEO Adam Woodworth said, "The U.S. is our focus for growth."
[MED] Medicine
An AI model reads health signs across 18 body systems from the way people walk
Scientists from the Human Phenotype Project in Israel reported in Nature Medicine on Friday that an AI model can predict many health measures from how a person moves. They filmed 3,328 adults with a single A camera that measures how far away things are, so it can see people and objects in 3D. In the Glossary, which sees in 3D, while each did 5 movement tasks. The model is a A large AI model trained on huge amounts of general data that can then be adapted to many different jobs. In the Glossary, a large AI trained on lots of data that can be used for many jobs, and it turned the motion of every joint into lists of numbers instead of the usual measures like stride length. Of 3,210 health measures tested, it predicted 1,887 better than chance. It came very close on body mass index and on belly fat, and it beat a simple guess based on age, weight, belly fat and height in all 18 body systems for men and 17 of 18 for women. Leg motion told the most about metabolism and frailty; the torso carried hints about sleep and lifestyle. Newton Tech, the company working with the team, said "Movement contains far more biological information" than standard tests record. These are links found in one group of people, and the model is not a medical test yet. Its code is free online for other scientists.
[DEF] Defense
The Army opens a $4.2 billion race to build new ammunition plants
The Army awarded a $4,171,491,000 contract on Thursday to design, build and start up new Army ammunition plants that the government owns and private companies run. It is a A contract where the government pays an agreed price and the company covers any cost overruns. In the Glossary, meaning the price of each job is set up front, shared by 11 companies that will compete for each piece of work, including Clark Construction, Burns & McDonnell, Hensel Phelps, BAE Systems Ordnance Systems and Parsons. Where the plants go and how much each one costs will be set order by order, and the work runs to Nov. 4, 2031. The Army calls the goal modernizing its "The arsenals, depots and ammunition plants the U.S. military owns to build and repair its own equipment. In the Glossary," the 23 arsenals, depots and ammunition plants it owns, and it spent more than $1 billion on that work in fiscal 2025, DVIDS reports. In the same list, Amentum won $609 million to supply at least 500 extra workers to Army depots. All the awards announced Thursday came to about $4.93 billion.
[POLICY] Law and Policy
The U.S. drops a plan to track crypto and international transfers as small as $250
The part of the U.S. Treasury that writes and enforces rules against money laundering. In the Glossary, the Treasury office that fights money laundering, and the Federal Reserve withdrew a 2020 proposal on Friday that would have tightened the A U.S. anti-money-laundering rule that makes banks and money services collect and pass along the names and details of the sender and receiver on transfers of $3,000 or more. In the Glossary. The Travel Rule makes banks and money services collect and pass along the names and details of senders and receivers on transfers of $3,000 or more. The old plan would have dropped that to $250 for transfers that start or end outside the U.S., and written crypto into the rule by name. It drew nearly 3,000 public comments, many worried about privacy and cost, crypto.news reports. The agencies said more than five years had passed and digital money had changed, and they could write a new plan later with a fresh chance to comment. Ji Hun Kim of the Crypto Council for Innovation called it the "right call," The Block reports. It follows the Treasury's October withdrawal of separate rules for crypto wallets people hold themselves. Not investment advice.
[TOKEN] Tokenized Assets
Nigeria's new stablecoin rules take effect, and foreign coin makers must get a local license
Nigeria's central bank rules for A digital token designed to stay worth a fixed amount, usually one U.S. dollar, backed by cash and safe assets such as Treasury bills. In the Glossary, digital coins meant to hold a steady value like one dollar or one naira, took effect Nov. 5, Unchained reports. Any company that issues a stablecoin used in Nigeria must now set up a company there and hold capital of 10 billion naira for a naira coin or 15 billion naira for a coin tied to a foreign currency. Issuers must keep 2% more in reserves than the coins they have out, may not pay interest to holders, and may not issue A digital coin that tries to keep a steady price using computer code and trading rules instead of cash held in a bank. In the Glossary, coins that try to hold their price with computer code instead of cash in the bank. Companies already working in Nigeria must register within 30 days and apply for a license within 180 days, which counts out to early May 2027. The Block reports the same terms. The rules are in the central bank's rulebook for virtual assets. Not investment advice.
[WILD] Wildcard
TSMC weighs making memory chips for Nvidia, a report says
TSMC, the Taiwan company that makes most of the world's most advanced A tiny slice of material, usually silicon, carved with billions of switches that let a device compute and store information. Chips run everything from phones to AI data centers. In the Glossary, is drafting plans to make a new kind of memory called Computer memory whose storage cells are stacked in layers, like floors in a building, instead of laid out flat, so more fits in the same space. In the Glossary after a request from Nvidia, The Information reported, as The Next Web summarizes. The fast short-term memory in computers and servers. It holds data only while the power is on. In the Glossary is the fast short-term memory a An AI's ability to operate a computer the way a person does, by looking at the screen and clicking, typing and filling in forms. It lets an assistant do online chores for you. In the Glossary while it works; 3D DRAM stacks its storage cells in layers, like floors in a building, to fit more in the same space. AI chips need huge amounts of memory, and there is not enough: Micron expects the shortage to last into 2028. TSMC could build new factories or buy and convert an old one, the way Micron bought a $1.8 billion plant in March, Runtime Wire reports. Vice president Hsu Kuo-chin would lead the work. TSMC said it does not comment on rumors. The move would put TSMC up against memory makers Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron.
Watch
Play video: All-In (Oct. 30), in case you missed it: the hosts go through Anthropic's filing to go public, Google's drop in market value and AI spending.
Play video: Moonshots with Peter Diamandis, episode 307 (Oct. 31), in case you missed it: Emad Mostaque on the late-October AI stock sell-off and Google's profits.Disclosure: Singularity Nightly is drafted with help from Anthropic's Claude. We cover Anthropic like any other company.
Voices
- Elon Musk, on X, said Tesla will be "winding down production of the Cybertruck" in Texas around the middle of next year to make room for more Cybercab robotaxis. source (opinion)
- Dr. Alexander Wissner-Gross, in The Innermost Loop, on the fight over A building full of computers that store data and run online services. Data centers for AI use large amounts of electricity. In the Glossary after the election: "The point where human and machine intelligence converge, and together set off advances so fast and so large that nobody can picture what comes after. Ray Kurzweil, who popularized the idea, frames it as people merging with the intelligence they build. In the Glossary has been put to a referendum." source (opinion)
- Peter Diamandis, in his holiday gift guide, said tech sticks only "when it's convenient enough." source (opinion)
By the Numbers
- More than $1.3 billion: what AST SpaceMobile will pay Firefly for engines, a license and engineering help. Payload
- 5: BlueBird satellites each Blacklift rocket is meant to carry. Payload
- 0: orbital launches worldwide in the window so far; 257 in 2026. Launch Library 2
- 1,887: health measures the walking AI predicted, out of 3,210 tested. Nature Medicine
- $4.17 billion: the Army's new ammunition plant design and build contract, shared by 11 companies. war.gov
- $6.12 billion: contracts the Pentagon announced Nov. 2 to 5. These are ceilings and orders, not money spent. war.gov
- $450 million: the most Viasat's Space Data Network control room contract can be worth. Breaking Defense
- $125 million: Wing's planned U.S. drone factory investment. Wing
- $3,000: the Travel Rule limit that stays in place; the dropped plan would have cut it to $250. FinCEN
- 60: the top score on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, Gemini 4 Carbon (High), unchanged. Artificial Analysis
- 47: novel drugs approved by the FDA in 2026, unchanged. FDA
- $39.36 billion: tokenized In blockchain finance, a traditional asset that exists outside the blockchain, such as a Treasury bill, a loan or a building, represented by a token on one. Often shortened to RWA. In the Glossary, excluding stablecoins. RWA.xyz Not investment advice.
Tomorrow's Watchlist
- Sat Nov. 7: NASA's MAX POWER event at Kennedy Space Center opens to the public at 9:00 AM ET; the NASA's program to send astronauts back to the Moon, using the Orion capsule and landers built by SpaceX and Blue Origin. In the Glossary III crew meets visitors at 12:45 PM ET; a Moon Base news conference with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman at 5:00 PM ET on nasa.gov/live. The American Heart Association meeting opens in Chicago at 9:00 AM ET.
- Sun Nov. 8: Long March 12 launch from Wenchang, about 3:25 PM ET; Precision BioSciences presents its full A virus that infects the liver, often for life, and can lead to liver scarring and cancer. In the Glossary results at the liver meeting in Denver, 4:15 PM ET.
- Mon Nov. 9: Congress returns for its session after the election; Tools that change a specific spot in a person's DNA, like fixing a typo in a long document. CRISPR is the best-known method. In the Glossary Therapeutics shares results for a one-time gene edit that lowers blood fats, 9:00 AM ET; Archer results; Falcon 9 USSF-627 from Vandenberg, 10:03 PM ET.
- Tue Nov. 10: China's pause on rare earth export controls is due to end; South Korea's new small military rocket may make its first flight, about 1:00 AM ET.
- Thu Nov. 12: AST SpaceMobile shows its Blacklift rocket in New York City.
- Fri Nov. 13: Vulcan returns with Amazon Leo satellites, 12:54 PM ET; Starship Flight 15, no earlier than this date, pending FAA approval.