head of comms @astroforge. ex-@techcrunch. viriditas 🌱 ✝️ per aspera ad astra 💫 Signal: ariaalam.18
Austin, TX
Joined March 2018
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"Over there, on the horizon, the sun has just touched with light the outermost fringe of the eastern sky. Once again, beneath this moving sheet of fire, the living surface of the earth wakes and trembles, and once again begins its fearful travail...."
I am so psyched I can finally talk about this news!!!!
We will not be able to industrialize the Solar System if each deep space mission depends on large ground teams and access to scarce, expensive terrestrial comms infrastructure.
LFG Autonomy-1!
Next year, we're going to launch a spacecraft that will be given zero commands from Earth after it separates from the launch vehicle.
The spacecraft will attempt to complete all of its mission objectives with no human operator in the loop.
Today we’re introducing Autonomy-1, powered by our spacecraft intelligence model, Solo. 🧵
there is so much cool stuff happening behind the scenes at @AstroForge AND I CAN’T POST ABOUT ANY OF IT
Aria Alamalhodaei retweeted
Time to expand this image.
Look at how much of the solar system humans are actively exploring
Curiosity and Perseverance on Mars.
Chang'e landers on the Moon.
Juno at Jupiter.
Voyager 1 and 2 in interstellar space.
Incredible!
Source: @OlafFrohn / Writer: Daniel
Aria Alamalhodaei retweeted
Dashed out a spicy take this AM laying out a couple ideas I've been thinking about since I left journalism nearly a year ago. Enjoy!
Dashed out a spicy take this AM laying out a couple ideas I've been thinking about since I left journalism nearly a year ago. Enjoy!
this is one of the most mysterious funding announcements I've come across, but Interlagos is on the cap table so it's probably rly cool 🫡 go in peace
Peace is possible. We're building it @Asymmlabs.
We've raised $51M toward that goal.
More announcements to come.
IT'S ALWAYS A VALVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wanted to give an update on the hotfire anomaly investigation. Progress continues. The anomaly originated at the main oxygen valve on one of the BE-4 engines, which was later confirmed by hardware recovery and inspections. Extensive component-level and engine hotfire tests have been conducted to understand the failure mode better and inform mitigations. The path forward is clear. We're making small modifications to the valve that can be quickly retrofitted to existing engines. We’re manufacturing the updated hardware, which will be ready by the end of this month. In parallel, we're working through the remaining fault tree analysis.
Aria Alamalhodaei retweeted
WE0913A drifted through cislunar space for 7 years without being identified. Analysts initially believed it was an expended Falcon 9 stage before finally determining that it was Chinese rocket hardware.
In 2022, calculations revealed it was headed straight for the Moon.
"Mars is its own place."
Curiosity has delivered a new 360-degree panorama from Mars. “We’ve seen a lot of fascinating landscapes through Curiosity’s eyes, but this sea of polygons took our breath away,” said the mission’s project scientist. 1/2
ALT Panoramic view of a desert landscape with textured ground and distant, layered hills. Part of the rover can be seen in the lower left.
ALT Reddish desert terrain textured with a pattern of small, hexagonal raised ridges. Part of the rover can be seen in the lower left.
ALT Layered rocks in the foreground and smoother reddish hills along the distant horizon.
ALT A rocky hill about 20 feet (6 meters) tall capped with sand on the pointy top.
it is well known that everyone whose surname ends in -aei is extremely powerful
Tara Rezaei (@tararezaeikh), 23, Iranian, is one of the wildest new Silicon Valley talent stories.
IOAA medalist for Iran in 2021.
MIT in 2022.
OpenAI intern.
Now co-founder of @mirendil, a frontier AI company that just raised a $200M seed from @a16z, Kleiner Perkins, and NVIDIA.
All of this in 4 years.
Btw, this story probably wouldn’t have happened if a travel ban had existed in 2022.
Image: Tara on Iran’s IOAA team in 2021.
Aria Alamalhodaei retweeted
DeepSpace-2 is a new model for interplanetary exploration. This is how we make deep space routine for resource extraction, science, planetary defense, and national security.
One thing I like about @MattGialich is that he is frank about the terms of the bet in a way few other founders are willing to be.
"DeepSpace-2 is a magical moment in the timeline of humanity if we get it right, and a nothing if we get it wrong."
From a comms perspective, Mr. Isaacman is doing a few effective things here:
- He doesn't take the easy way out. Instead of deflecting onto Congress, he puts the blame on NASA. But that's actually a flex: a budget problem needs Congress, an allocation problem needs leadership. The failure is located in a place he can control.
- All good stories have a villain. His isn't Congress, which is NASA's funder and is highly politicized anyway. It's misallocation and inertia. Again: something he controls.
- He keeps saying "we," even though these programs predate his NASA tenure by years. They aren't his failures, but owning them tells the workforce he won't throw them under the bus.
- Speaking of - Owning blame is a costly signal, and credibility is what he gets for paying it.
- Finally, all of this only works unmediated, straight from his mouth. Run the same words through a press office and they'd come out completely different.
"NASA wasted $20 billion on dozens of failed nuclear power and propulsion programs that never went to space once."
NASA Administrator @rookisaacman:
"I can't tell you how many times I contend with this. NASA doesn't have enough money, the budget is too small. No, we're terrible allocators of capital. We do not have a top line problem."
"So I'm going back to all these failed programs. We're taking reactors, partially paid for fuel, power conversion, radiators. We're bolting this thing together. And we are sending it to Mars. The first interplanetary nuclear spacecraft ever."
"We're going to drop off an incredibly inspiring badass payload on Mars, three Ingenuity class helicopters that are going to scan for potential landing sites, looking for water ice underneath the surface."
The Hill & Valley Forum 2026
@HillValleyForum @zebulgar @NASA @rookisaacman