ATHLETE (All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer) is a robotic vehicle which was developed by a team of companies and academic institutions. The team, led by JPL Robotics, includes NASA’s Johnson and Ames Centers, Stanford University, and Boeing. This six-legged prototype is ...
The Sky is Falling or Much Ado About Nothing
On March 24th the World Wide Web was flooded with a photograph of a large spherical object, which reportedly had fallen from the sky, landing in a farming area in central Brazil. The story was first published by Daniel Drehmer, ...
Mars’ Hebes Chasma
The European Space Agency’s Mars Express Orbiter recently took 3D, high-quality photos of Mars. Using its high advanced stereo camera, with a resolution of up to 15 meters per pixel, the orbiter captured images of Hebes Chasma, a strange mountain ...
Building Blocks of Life Found in Space
Using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, U.S. researchers have discovered large amounts of simple organic gases and water vapor in a possible planet-forming region around an infant star. The scientists found even more water surroundings two other young stars in the ...
Smaller Stars Help Bigger Stars Form
According to a new theory proposed by astrophysicists from Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley, massive stars form inside an interstellar cloud of gas and dust, with the “help” of smaller stars. The smaller stars, which are about ...
STS-123 Heading for Space Station
The Space shuttle Endeavour was launched into orbit earlier this morning carrying seven astronauts, a special Canadian robotic system, and a section of Japan’s space-based laboratory. This shuttle launch comes at a time when NASA faces a grim reality – ...
ATLAS Detector Finally Assembled
The final piece of the ATLAS particle detector, located in Geneva, Switzerland, has finally been lowered into the underground CERN laboratory collision hall. This marks an important milestone in the construction of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which will eventually ...
Triangulum Galaxy
Combining 39 individual frames taken over 11 hours of exposure time, NASA astronomers have created an ultraviolet mosaic of the nearby “Triangulum Galaxy.” This is the most detailed ultraviolet image of an entire galaxy ever taken. The images were captured ...
Magnetic Neutron Star
Observations from NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) have revealed an important clue regarding the life cycle of neutron stars. The youngest known pulsing neutron star, PSR J1846-0258, located in the constellation Aquila, has been observed to produce magnetar-like X-ray ...
Morphing Shape Alloy
Researchers from the Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, teamed up with Boise State University Professor Peter Mullner to create a foam from a nickel-manganese-gallium alloy (Ni-Mn-Ga). This special foam changes shape when exposed to a magnetic ...