Companies Lunar Energy

NASA Reshuffles Lunar Contracts, Cold War Plutonium Eyes a Second Life

NASA awarded lunar rover contracts worth $4.6 billion to Lunar Outpost and Astrolab for the Artemis program, pointedly excluding Intuitive Machines — whose stock fell sharply on the news. The selection signals that the agency is prioritizing technical capability over established contractor relationships, a posture intended to spur innovation but one that introduces uncertainty for companies making long-horizon space investments.

Oklo was selected by the Department of Energy to negotiate using Cold War-era plutonium as reactor fuel, working with European partner newcleo to convert surplus weapons-grade material into fuel for next-generation reactors. The program addresses nuclear waste disposal and energy production simultaneously, a rare alignment of national security interests and commercial opportunity: material that is expensive to store safely becomes feedstock for advanced reactors that need specialized fuel.

More than 60 million people faced flash flooding threats stretching from Texas to the Mid-Atlantic as days of heavy rain saturated soils across multiple regions. The scale and geographic breadth of the flooding point to climate patterns with cascading implications for agricultural output, infrastructure investment, and the insurance pricing that underlies housing costs across affected areas.

California wine country confronted a different kind of threat: an invasive pest discovered on Costco grapevines that could spread to Napa and Sonoma vineyards. Officials are racing to locate 157 plants sold to consumers that may carry insects capable of damaging established wine regions. The episode illustrates how global retail supply chains can inadvertently transmit agricultural threats to industries whose value depends on specific, hard-to-replicate growing conditions.

In enterprise software, AlmaLinux shipped both versions 9.8 and 10.2 on the same day — a logistical feat that demonstrates the community-driven project has developed robust development and testing capabilities since emerging as an alternative to CentOS. For organizations seeking to reduce dependence on Red Hat's commercial offerings while maintaining enterprise-grade Linux, the milestone matters as cloud infrastructure costs rise and open-source alternatives attract renewed interest.