Tag: NASA

Robonaut (or R2 for short) just made his grand debut on the International Space Station as the first humanoid 'bot to reach the void above. R2 was dropped off by the Space Shuttle Discovery on its last mission to the final frontier, and on Tuesday (a full two and half weeks after its arrival) crew aboard the ISS finally held an unveiling ceremony for its latest member. Astronauts Catherine ...

Ridiculous and implausible science fiction movies number in the thousands, but one particularly absurd film has actually provoked public admonishment from NASA. According to The Australian, NASA members recently discussed Hollywood science fiction fare, particularly the inane nonsense offered by 'Armageddon,' 'The 6th Day' and the unprecedentedly terrible [Ed. note: AMAZING] '2012.' The ...

NASA recently decided to sell off some of its old computers. Unfortunately, though, it forgot to erase some of the sensitive data that many of those computers still held. The embarrassing oversight came to light in a recent internal investigation (PDF), during which the issue was discovered at four NASA locations: Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers, and the Ames and Langley Research Centers. ...

Share We stumble across countless tech demos and flashy designs every week, but they usually leave us thinking little more than "that's cool." /dev/fort's new Spacelog is a spectacularly organized and designed site documenting the Apollo 13 and Mercury 6 missions. The site pulls from NASA missions' original radio transcripts, and displays communications like status updates -- yes, the "Houston, ...

NASA announced that a research team has found a microbe in California's Mono Lake that is unlike anything encountered before. This microbe's cell components replace phosphorous, one of the building blocks of life, with arsenic. This is the first life-form discovered that deviates from the basic SPONCH formula for creating DNA . The discovery expands the possibility of finding extraterrestrial ...

While NASA's plans to return a human to the Moon may have died when budget cuts killed its Constellation program, the space administration reportedly intends to send the next best thing to the lunar surface: a humanoid. Spearheaded by engineer Stephen J. Altemus, NASA's Project M robot moon-walker mission conceivably involves launching "a humanoid-like machine" into space and then onto the Moon, ...

If you've ever attended a sporting event, you've seen the guys and girls who carry air cannons on their shoulders and blast t-shirts into the stands. But rest assured, you have never seen anything like this 10-barrel, robotic Gatling gun that pumps out three tees every second. Designed by NASA and Team 254 Robotics of Bellarmine College Preparatory, the 'bot can blast a total of 400 shirts with ...

Astronaut Doug Wheelock just became the first person to unlock the NASA Explorer badge on Foursquare by checking in from the International Space Station. We're assuming he's also now the mayor of the ISS, an accomplishment that will be tough to wrangle away from his space-suited hands. But don't fret, you Foursquare completists: you'll now be able to unlock the Explorer badge by visiting various ...

Technology, particularly the Internet and social networking, allows NASA to engage space enthusiasts through an expanding assortment of entertaining and educational interactive programs. Space geeks can read tweets from astronauts, launch their face into orbit, help map the moon, participate in research projects and -- now -- earn virtual moon rocks, spacesuits, shuttles and (awesomely absurd) ...

With the shuttles entering retirement and its budget slashed, NASA has been looking forward to a cloudy future of late. But, with the signing of the NASA Authorization Act 2010, Congress and President Obama have ensured that the world's leading space exploration and research agency will continue to operate at the forefront of the field, albeit in a form that may seem unrecognizable to many. The ...

Ever tried to stage a lunar landing? Well, chances are, it didn't go so well, or even resemble the 1969 event at all. Luckily, a Hasselblad MKWE just went up for sale on eBay at the low price of $33,751. This camera was made specifically for NASA by Hasselblad, and was used by moon-walkers to capture those historic images of golf swings and patriotism. Now, to find a spare spacesuit... ...

While it's out of the average person's price range, commercial space flight continues to move forward as government-funded space flight withers with a struggling economy. According to Space.com, Boeing, along with partner Space Adventures, plans to sell passenger seats aboard its Boeing Crew Space Transportation-100 spacecraft, which will make its first test flights by 2015. The cone-shaped ...

Share Yesterday afternoon, a massive virus hit e-mail accounts across the world, including those at major corporations like ABC/Disney, Google, Coca-Cola and NASA. According to ABC News, the trojan virus spread through e-mails with subject lines that read 'Here You Have,' while other versions of the worm were hidden under subject lines like 'This is The Free Dowload Sex Movies,you can find it ...

There's nothing like images of Earth from space to make you feel both insignificant and full of wonder. This time-lapsed footage, taken from the International Space Station (in HD no less), is some of the most stunning we've seen in a long time. Snapped by NASA astronaut Don Pettit, this footage makes us think we picked the wrong profession. ...

As part of what must be the coolest undergraduate class ever, a group of students from the University of Colorado at Boulder recently crashed a NASA satellite into the ocean -- on purpose. As PopSci explains, undergrads and professors at UC-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) spent a full seven years monitoring NASA's Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) as ...