Space

Mars One, the project that aims to put a group of colonists on Mars in 2025, is poised to take its first big step forward. On Tuesday, the Mars One foundation announced partnerships with Lockheed Martin and satellite company SSTL for an exploratory mission in 2018, potentially sending the first private spacecraft to Mars. Instead Continue Reading →

India launched its first unmanned mission to Mars on Tuesday as it tries to join a select group of countries that have managed to land spacecraft on the Red Planet. As the rocket sped off towards space from Sriharikota, a small island near Chennai in the southern part of the country, it was a huge Continue Reading →

NASA has set a new record for data transmission to and from the moon with a 622Mbps transfer carried over laser beams. The space agency used pulsed lasers to transmit data between a ground station in New Mexico and a spacecraft 239,000 miles away during its recent Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration. The agency was also Continue Reading →

When The Space Shuttle was conceived, its mission was to make space flight “cheap.” (As these things go.) Original estimates had hoped that eventually the program would cost a frugal $50 million per launch. That dream was never realized, and in the end cost a total of $196 billion — an average of $450 million Continue Reading →

In June 2014, astronauts whizzing by high above us in the International Space Station may be able to print a highly detailed plastic Yoda head or, barring that, important parts that they may need while in orbit. NASA has already designed and built their own additive manufacturing printer that has a build envelope of about Continue Reading →

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 prototype of his universal food synthesizer. But Contractor, Continue Reading →

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, for all its accomplishments over Continue Reading →

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 exhausts, and Continue Reading →

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. For instance, to Continue Reading →

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 stuffing, Continue Reading →