Anjan Contractor’s 3D food printer might evoke visions of the “replicator” popularized in Star Trek, from which Captain Picard was constantly interrupting himself to order tea. And indeed Contractor’s company, Systems & Materials Research Corporation, just got a six month, $125,000 grant from NASA to create a ...
NASA is Broken; We Can Fix It
on 12.7.12
In 2011, NASA commissioned the National Research Council to put together a report to serve as a "comprehensive independent assessment of NASA's strategic direction and agency management." That report, released on Wednesday, reads as a damning litany of what's wrong with one of the United States government's crown jewels. ...
NASA accidentally improves weather forecasting with lunar dust-measuring lasers
on 12.4.12
Anyone that's ever tried to plan an outdoor activity in advance knows that weather forecasting is not an exact science, but the perpetual sky-watchers at NASA may have inadvertently found a way to improve these guesstimations. They have been testing a laser system for measuring lunar dust and soil kicked up by rocket ...
Alien Hairspray May Help Us Find E.T.
on 11.28.12
Hairspray might one day serve as the sign that aliens have reshaped distant worlds, researchers say. Such research to find signs of alien technology is now open to funding from the public. Science fiction has long imagined that humans could transform hostile alien worlds into livable ones, a procedure known as terraforming. ...
Astronauts Will Have Thanksgiving Feast in Space
on 11.21.12
Turkey and all the trimmings are a staple for Americans on Thanksgiving, and that doesn’t have to change for Americans in space. Astronaut food has come a long way from the early days of human spaceflight, and crewmembers on the International Space Station these days can enjoy many Turkey Day traditions, such as cornbread ...
NASA’s Curiosity rover checks in on Foursquare, gives Mars its first mayor
on 10.4.12
Yes, seriously. NASA announced on Wednesday that its Curiosity rover had "checked in" on Mars via Foursquare. Marking the first check in from another world, the robotic rover will utilize the location-minded social network to share updates and pictures while visiting the Red Planet. While Curiosity will continue to explore ...
Farewell Neil Armstrong, the Ultimate Test Pilot
on 8.26.12
Neil Armstrong — who has died at the age of 82 — was best known as the commander of Apollo 11, but his career at NASA began nearly a decade earlier as a research test pilot. A trained aerospace engineer, Armstrong was a self-described “white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer” who worked at the cutting edge of ...
Curiosity rover flaunts its battle scar, wind sensor is bruised (but not broken)
on 8.22.12
You can't win 'em all. Such is the case with the Curiosity rover, anyway, as diagnostics have revealed that its wind sensors have sustained damage. NASA engineers aren't fully sure what caused this minor setback to the otherwise successful landing, but hypothesize that stones might've been kicked up during the ...
Robot Hall of Fame voting begins for class of 2012, Johnny 5 learns where BigDogs sit
on 8.21.12
It's that time again: time for Carnegie Mellon to roll out the red carpet and welcome the crème de la crème of the robotics world into its halls. Since 2003 the school has been selecting the best of the best and inducting them into the Robot Hall of Fame. Past honorees have included everything from LEGO Mindstorms to the ...
NASA plans mission to study hidden interior of Mars
on 8.21.12
NASA plans to launch a relatively modest Mars lander in 2016 that will make a rocket-powered descent to the surface to study whether the red planet's core is solid or liquid and whether the planet has tectonic plates that slowly move like continents on Earth, agency managers said Monday. The primary goals of the cost-capped ...
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