Spaceships with tentacles. Designing an award-winning drug. How the Fed hiking rates will impact emerging tech. All that and more in this week’s Prototype. To get it in your inbox, sign up here .

E arth’s orbit is starting to get a little crowded . Ten years ago, there were around 1,500 satellites in orbit. There are over 15,000 today. Plus roughly 31,000 total objects being tracked when you take space junk into account.

That’s where Adam Kall and Troy Morris come in. Their startup, KMI space, is building a spaceship that can both physically de-orbit debris and move other satellites in orbit around. Their design, called REACCH, is inspired by nature—it uses appendages that I can only describe as tentacles, complete with gecko-inspired pads to hold onto objects.

As more infrastructure is developed in space, there are a number of companies tackling ways to keep satellites in orbit longer. There are companies building fueling stations in space, and developing spacecraft that can conduct repairs in space. CEO Morris describes what his company is doing as developing “tow trucks” for space. “There is a lot you can do with moving things in space that’s not just taking debris and de-orbiting it,” Kall said. “There’s trips down, there’s trips up, there’s trips sideways. And so, we are really expanding the market.”

Since it was founded in 2019, the Michigan-based startup has been making steady progress toward its goal. In 2024, they launched a small version of their system onto the International Space Station, and over the course of around 200 days in 2025, astronauts successfully conducted hundreds of tests of the REACCH system capturing objects in zero gravity.

The test runs “validated a simulation that we already had,” Kall told me. “We can now trust it when we change the design in the simulation, that it’s showing us if this is really going to work or not with the actual physics of capture.”

That’s crucial for the company’s next step—a large-scale version of their spacecraft set to launch in early 2028, with in-orbit captures of objects slated for later that year. If successful, the company plans to put more than a dozen spacecraft in orbit at different points, which will have the ability to either maneuver active satellites or kick space junk into the Earth’s atmosphere to safely burn up.

To get there, the company has so far raised more than $10 million from investors. It also has been awarded grants and contracts from the Department of Defense and NASA. More recently, the company was chosen for a StratFi award from the Space Force, which will supply it with additional capital.

"It’s a really exciting point for us with this StratFi announcement, investor interest, and just waiting to get going on only a few more things—but it’s moving and grooving,” Morris said.

The Long, Long Road To Making An Innovative Drug

E arlier this month , the Lasker Awards were announced , which annually honor those who make major contributions to clinical discoveries or public service in healthcare.

This year, the award for Clinical Research went to Takehisa Kitazawa, Kunihiro Hattori and Tomoyuki Igawa for their development of Hemlibra. It’s a drug used to treat hemophilia A, a genetic disorder that impairs the ability of blood to clot, leaving those afflicted with it with multiple health risks. Hemlibra is a bispecific antibody—a protein designed in a lab to bind to two different targets at the same time.

“The idea was highly unconventional,” Hattori told me. “Most therapeutic antibodies were designed to block a biological target. We were asking an antibody to perform the function of another protein.”

Hattori came up with the original idea in 2000. The idea was to design a drug that could replace Factor VIII, a molecule in your body that holds two others together so that blood clots can form. In people with hemophilia, Factor VIII doesn’t form properly, preventing it from doing its job.

It took some perseverance—the first molecules designed not only didn’t work, they actually made bleeding worse in animal test subjects. “But the failure of one molecule did not necessarily mean that the underlying concept was wrong,” Hattori said. In fact, he went on, the team learned from that failure as they continued.

That meant screening a lot of potential candidates to find one that would work. No easy task, Kitazawa told me. After the failure of that candidate, the researchers redesigned their tests to include new ways of measuring potential effectiveness. They reviewed 40,000 potential candidates.

Once they had an antibody that worked, the job wasn’t over, Igawa said. “We had to design an antibody that combined the desired biological function with reliable manufacturability.”

Eventually, they were able to do so. After five years of clinical trials, Hemlibra was approved by the FDA—17 years after Hattori had the first initial idea.

Quantum In The Wild: Tennessee-based internet provider and energy utility EPB just turned on its first quantum computer, a Forte model manufactured by IonQ, at a facility in Chattanooga where EPB is building quantum networking capabilities. The news comes the same week that IonQ announced that the use of its quantum computers, in conjunction with classical computers, improved the efficiency of complex simulations used for vehicle engineering.

Growing Bones In Space: L.A. based startup Helogen, which is building orbital factories for biomaterials, signed a contract with University College London to 3D-print bones in space. The goal is to use the microgravity environment to simulate osteoporosis, making it easier for researchers to understand how it works and develop treatments for it.

Military AI Follies: A faulty intelligence report compiled in part with an AI chatbot nearly led to a U.S. military conflict with China, reports CNN . The AI system wrongly claimed a Chinese ship was carrying nuclear materials to Iran, and plans were made for U.S. troops to board the ship before the mistake was caught. Cue “99 Red Balloons.”

State of the Strait: Although there appears to be some ship traffic going through the Strait of Hormuz, that’s still a fraction of what was shipping through before the war—and now two tankers have been attacked in the area this week. The global economy is starting to feel the effects, as diesel prices are approaching an average of $6 per gallon . The energy disruptions are keeping inflation high, which led the Fed to raise interest rates this week. The upshot here is that I think you can expect more investors to pull away from emerging tech. AI startups are probably safe, since investors are expecting exits and revenue in the shorter term. But riskier plays with long development windows like biotech? They’ll be harder to sell.

What’s Entertaining Me This Week

As a long-time fan of the comics character Green Lantern, I’m very much enjoying Lanterns , currently streaming on HBO Max. For those not aware, Green Lanterns are basically space cops, tasked to protect their areas of space from external threats. HBO has taken this premise and given it a grounded, prestige drama take on the characters, ably led by Kyle Chander and Aaron Pierre. We’re just over halfway through the first season and I’m riveted.