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Saudi Arabia To Host Sixth Halo Space Test Flight In September
The space tourism startup aims to conduct crewed flights in 2025 and commence full commercial operations by as early as 2026.
Space tourism company Halo Space has announced plans for another test flight in Saudi Arabia, scheduled for September 2024, in collaboration with the Kingdom’s Communications, Space and Technology Commission (CST).
The event will be Halo Space’s 6th test flight and a key milestone in Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 strategy. The test will deploy Halo Space’s prototype Aurora capsule, which will travel around 30 km into Earth’s high atmosphere and the edge of space. According to Alberto Castrillo, Halo Space’s Chief Technology Officer, the flight will further test the engineering of the high-tech craft:
“The mission is designed to meticulously validate all the critical systems we’ve been developing for the past three years. The dates and location were set to ensure the reliable operation of our equipment and safe conditions for the teams on the ground operating the flight”.
Frank Salzgeber, Acting Deputy Governor for the Space Sector at CST, added, “This innovative project represents a significant step forward in Space Tourism. In support of such technological advancements and investment opportunities in Saudi Arabia, CST is always committed to providing regulatory frameworks that foster innovation among companies and projects like Halo Space while ensuring the safety of personnel and materials”.
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Halo Space’s prototype test flights are in preparation for the launch of fully crewed missions, which are expected to take place in 2025. Commercial flights could be available from 2026 and will offer the completely unique experience of rising gently above the Earth in a balloon-lifted capsule.
The journey, spanning up to 200 horizontal km and 35 vertical km, will last over six hours, allowing passengers to witness the curvature of the Earth and the vastness of space. Halo Space aims to make space tourism accessible to a wide audience by 2030 and plans to carry over 10,000 passengers by the decade’s end.
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At I/O 2026, Sundar Pichai Concedes AI Must Deliver Real Value
Gemini 3.5, a personal agent called Spark, agentic shopping, and Android XR eyewear are all aimed at making AI feel useful, not just impressive.
Google’s annual I/O developer conference (I/O 2026) has recently become a status update on the same question: can the company turn its AI spending into products people use every day? This year, chief executive Sundar Pichai described Google as being in a phase of hyper progress, while conceding this is the part of the cycle where people want to see real value in the products they use on a day-to-day basis.
The strategy on display was to push agents — AI systems that act on a user’s behalf — into nearly every Google product at once. Search now has an “intelligent search box” that returns generated explainer videos alongside links. Gmail, Docs, YouTube and Maps are gaining their own agent layers, including a Docs Live feature that turns spoken instructions into drafted text with citations.
Two new models, Gemini 3.5 and a cheaper Gemini 3.5 Flash, arrived the same day. Google says 900 million people now use Gemini, and that more than 50 billion images have been generated with it. The pricing tier names are likely to confuse buyers: a new AI Ultra plan launches at $100 a month, while the older Gemini AI Ultra drops from $250 to $200.
The flashier announcements were Gemini Omni, a video generator pitched as a more realistic answer to OpenAI’s discontinued Sora 2, and Gemini Spark, a personal agent that handles recurring tasks across a user’s Google account. A new universal shopping cart lets agents complete purchases across multiple retailers from inside Google itself, placing the company between the merchant and the buyer, and also owning the checkout.
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Google also confirmed its Android XR eyewear, built with Samsung and frames from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Audio-only glasses ship this autumn; a display-equipped version, which would superimpose live translations into the wearer’s field of view, is still in development. Both sets translate, however only the display version shows you the result.
What Pichai did not resolve is the bargain underneath all this. An agent is only useful to the degree it knows your calendar, your inbox, your shopping history and your physical surroundings. Google has now confirmed that, in time, the same context may carry advertising.
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