Space

NASA and GM Create Cutting Edge Robotic Technology

NASA and General Motors are working together to accelerate development of the next generation of robots and related technologies for use in the automotive and aerospace industries.Read More

SPHERES robotic satellites fly in formation on space station

MIT has a set of robots called SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient Experimental Satellites) on board the International Space Station to test out algorithms for autonomous navigation and docking maneuvers. Each sphere is about 8" in diameter and has 18 sides.Read More

NASA's Mars exploration rover Opportunity is allowing scientists to get a glimpse deep inside Mars

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell

Found on a Martian plain, a dark rock not much bigger than a basketball was the target of interest for Opportunity during the past two months. Dubbed "Marquette Island," the rock is providing a better understanding of the mineral and chemical makeup of the Martian interior.Read More

New Constellation space suite developed for the next trip to the moon

Worcester, MA-based David Clark Company has developed an early prototype of the Constellation space suit, NASA's next suit for travel to the moon.Read More

Physicist John Hunter wants to shoot stuff into space with a 3,600-foot gun.

Building colossal guns has been John Hunter’s pet project since 1992, when, while a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, he first fired a 425-foot gun he built to test-launch hypersonic engines. Its methane-driven piston compressed hydrogen gas, which then expanded up the barrel to shoot a projectile.Read More

A solar eclipse that reduced the sun to a blazing ring surrounding a black disk has entered the record books as the longest annular eclipse for 1000 years.Read More

It's not easy finding a plumber in space

NASA is finding it is not just mechanical glitches that make the International Space Station a tough place to operate. Engineers are trouble-shooting a problem with the station's $250 million water recycling system, which processes urine into clean water for drinking, believe the cause is a high concentration of calcium in the astronauts' urine, which clogs the system.Read More

570-Megapixel Digital Camera is the Largest in the World

You’re looking at the heart of one of the biggest digital cameras ever conceived — 74 CCD sensors that will go into an enclosure the size of a Mini Cooper. The 570-megapixel shooter is being built at Fermilab by an international team of particle physicists and astronomers, who think it will help solve one of the great mysteries of the cosmos: What is dark energy?Read More

An open 15-foot door for a NASA telescope posed no flight problems for the $500 million Boeing 747

NASA reports positive results from initial open-door testing of its Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (Sofia), a research platform that includes a huge telescope mounted on a Boeing 747.Read More

Moons Passing in Front of Saturn

The Hubble Space Telescope, carried into orbit by a NASA space shuttle in 1990, is the world's first and only telescope that was designed specifically to be serviced by astronauts.

The Sombrero Galaxy
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