JPL Robotics’ Lemur (Limbed Excursion Mechanical Utility Robots) were designed to address maintenance issues on spacecrafts and space stations. The robot, named after the monkey-like animals, is equipped with a stereo camera set, allowing omni-directional vision. Lemur provides a basis ...
STS-122 Atlantis Mission Takes Off
At approximately 2:47 p.m. EST the space shuttle “Atlantis” successfully lifted off the ground from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. About two months after the shuttle’s original launch date, after which liftoff was delayed a number of times, NASA ...
‘Space Ship Two’ Unveiled
Virgin Galactic, a company owned and established by Richard Branson’s Virgin Group in order to create the world’s first commercial spaceline, has unveiled the designs of the Space Ship Two and White Knight Two carrier aircrafts. Space Ship Two is ...
NASA’s Annual Great Moonbuggy Race
NASA’s 15th annual Great Moonbuggy Race is scheduled for April, 2008. Each year, college and high school students design and drive two-person lunar vehicles across a half-mile course of simulated lunar terrain with various obstacles, such as craters and rocks. ...
What is Adiabatic Computation?
The adiabatic computation stresses the deep and mysterious connection between physics and mathematics. Using a principle of quantum mechanics we try to find a shortcut to solutions of mathematical problems. It is not clear why we can use physics to ...
Bending Light the Wrong Way
A Princeton University research team has recently created an easy-to-produce material that has the rare ability to bend light in the opposite direction from all naturally occurring materials. This new substance belongs to the relatively new class of materials called ...
Asteroid to Hit Mars?
This past November, the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Arizona discovered an asteroid receding from the Earth, heading towards Mars with. Astronomers estimate there is a one in 25 (four percent) chance of that this asteroid will directly hit ...
Spacesuits for You and Me
“Orbital Outfitters”, a California and Washington D.C. based start-up company, has demonstrated the first space suit designed for private space travelers. The spacesuit prototype was presented at this year’s X-Prize Cup, an annual air & Space exposition founded in order ...
In Search of the Tunguska Meteorite
A team of Italian scientists from the University of Bologna recently identified a lake in the Tunguska region as the possible impact crater from the 1908 Tunguska event. Lake Cheko is a small bowl-shaped lake, situated approximately 8 kilometers north-north-west ...
Heavy Metals
A team of physicists recently found that an atomic nucleus can hold many more neutrons than what was previously considered possible. In experiments conducted earlier this year, researchers created and detected one new ultra-heavy isotope of magnesium – magnesium-40 – ...