Future Radar
Milestones the industry has announced for the coming years. Dates are public targets set by companies and agencies — and targets change. That is why we show who promised and what has been proven.
Timeline
First commercial Moon landing
The IM-1 mission landed near the lunar south pole — and tipped over. A partial but historic success.
Announced by: Intuitive Machines
Willow chip and below-threshold error correction
For the first time, adding qubits reduced errors instead of increasing them.
Announced by: Google Quantum AI
2 nm chips in volume production
The N2 process introduces gate-all-around transistors, the biggest architecture change in over a decade.
Announced by: TSMC
Artemis II: humans around the Moon
In April 2026, four astronauts flew around the Moon aboard Orion — the first crewed flight beyond low Earth orbit since 1972.
Announced by: NASA
Rubin AI platform
Blackwell’s successor, with a new CPU (Vera) and HBM4 memory.
Announced by: NVIDIA
Optimus humanoid robots in production
A target announced by the company — with a history of slipping timelines. Worth watching the evidence.
Announced by: Tesla
Artemis III: in-orbit docking test
In 2026 NASA reshaped the program: Artemis III became a docking test flight with the commercial lunar landers, without a landing.
Announced by: NASA
Astronauts return to the lunar surface
The new target for the Artemis program’s first crewed landing.
Announced by: NASA / SpaceX / Blue Origin
Fusion electricity sold to Microsoft
History’s first fusion power purchase agreement. No fusion plant has delivered net electricity to the grid so far.
Announced by: Helion Energy / Microsoft
Starling: a fault-tolerant quantum computer
Target of 200 logical qubits able to run 100 million error-free operations.
Announced by: IBM
First small modular reactor for Google
Agreement to buy power from molten-salt-cooled modular reactors from the end of the decade.
Announced by: Google / Kairos Power
Retirement of the International Space Station
A SpaceX vehicle will perform the ISS controlled reentry. Commercial stations are meant to take its place.
Announced by: NASA / SpaceX
ARC: grid-connected fusion plant
Planned for the early 2030s in Virginia, with Google buying part of the power.
Announced by: Commonwealth Fusion Systems
Living glossary
Terms used across the site, explained in a few lines.
GPU
A processor with thousands of cores computing in parallel. Built for graphics, now the engine of AI training.
HBM
High Bandwidth Memory: memory chips stacked next to the processor to feed AI with data very fast.
EUV
Extreme ultraviolet lithography: 13.5 nm light used to “print” the finest circuits on chips. Only ASML makes these machines.
Nanômetro (nm)
A billionth of a meter. In chips, “3 nm” or “2 nm” names a manufacturing generation rather than an exact measurement.
Foundry
A factory that produces chips designed by other companies, as TSMC does for Apple and NVIDIA.
LLM
Large language model: AI trained on huge amounts of text to understand and generate language.
Treinamento e inferência
Training is when AI learns from data; inference is when it is used to answer. Inference grows with every user.
Qubit
The unit of quantum information. It can be in a superposition of 0 and 1 and become entangled with other qubits.
Qubit lógico
A “reliable” qubit made of many physical qubits that correct each other’s errors.
Supercondutor
A material that conducts electricity with no resistance when cooled near absolute zero. The basis of IBM, Google and Rigetti qubits.
Fusão nuclear
Joining light nuclei (like hydrogen) to release energy — what happens in the Sun. It does not yet produce commercial electricity.
SMR
Small modular reactor: a smaller nuclear plant built in modules, promising faster and cheaper construction.
HALEU
High-assay low-enriched uranium (5% to 20%), fuel for several new reactor designs. Global supply is still small.
Órbita baixa (LEO)
Orbit between ~160 and 2,000 km altitude. The Space Station flies at about 400 km and circles Earth every ~90 minutes.
Direct-to-cell
Satellites that connect directly to ordinary phones, with no special antenna.
Índice Kp
A 0–9 scale measuring disturbances in Earth’s magnetic field. Kp 5 or higher = geomagnetic storm.
Vento solar
A continuous stream of charged particles leaving the Sun. When strong, it causes auroras.
Humanoide
A human-shaped robot designed to work in environments built for people.
CRISPR
A tool that works like molecular “scissors” to edit DNA at precise points.
GLP-1
A gut hormone that regulates appetite and glucose. Drugs that mimic it transformed obesity and diabetes treatment.
ROV
Remotely operated underwater vehicle, linked to the surface by a cable (tether). AquaBot belongs to this family.
Estanqueidade
The ability to keep water out. In underwater robots it is the biggest challenge: every hole, cable and lid must be sealed.
Flutuabilidade
The balance between the robot’s weight and the water’s buoyant force, tuned with ballast and floats so it neither sinks nor floats on its own.
ESC
Electronic speed controller: the circuit that controls the thrusters’ motor speed.
IMU
Inertial measurement unit: a sensor with accelerometer and gyroscope that reports the robot’s tilt and motion.