player. According to the federal government, SNC has $1.57 billion in government “dollars obligated” to it through federal contracts, while Washington Technology, which covers government contractors, reported it had 2014 revenue of $482 million.
Mars or bust: There’s still some good news for the Colorado space industry—hopefully. On Sunday, NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution satellite, or MAVEN, is set to enter orbit around Mars.
MAVEN has several ties to Colorado companies. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, which is in Littleton, built the spacecraft and is handling mission operations. The United Launch Alliance, based in Centennial, launched the craft last November aboard one of its rockets. Finally, the University of Colorado at Boulder is the project lead in charge of science operations. CU’s researchers also built two of the instruments aboard MAVEN.
The spacecraft will study the Martian atmosphere and try to provide researchers with new information about how the Red Planet’s climate changed from being warm, wet, and potentially habitable billions of year ago to the cold, dry, and desolate place it is today.
CU is hosting a watch party that the program’s chief scientists will attend, while representatives of Lockheed Martin and ULA will attend an event at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. NASA also will broadcast the maneuver live on NASA TV and on its website.
Security conference wraps up: A few hundred computer security experts and software developers spent the week in Denver at the annual AppSec USA Conference. The Open Web Application Security Project, a global nonprofit group, ran the event.
The goal of AppSec and OWASP is to bring the latest in security to non-expert developers, said Mark Major, head of the Boulder OWASP chapter and one of the organizers of the event.
The conference featured numerous keynotes and workshops, and while those are over, OWASP does publish many resources on the Web, most notably its technical report on the top 10 threats Web application developers should be aware of. The report is here.
Loop Labs clears $100K: It looks like one company currently in Techstars’ Boulder program isn’t waiting around for Demo Day to make a splash—or raise money.
Loop Labs, doing business as Notion, launched a Kickstarter campaign this week and already has doubled its $50,000 goal. As of noon Friday, the company raised more than $109,000, and the campaign still has 26 days to go.
Notion is a multifunction home intelligence sensor. According to the Kickstarter page, it can tell users things like whether they’ve left a garage door open, there’s a water leak, or a liquor cabinet or gun safe has been opened.
Check out the page for more details.
