Collaborate Disseminate
NASA’s Mars 2020 Mars rover passed its first set of eye exams as engineers work on the unmanned explorer’s array of cameras. The first complement of what will be a total of 23 cameras was installed on the front of the rover at the Spacecraft … Continue reading Mars 2020 rover passes robotic eye exam
For the daring tippler, scientists from Ukraine and the University of Portsmouth led by Professor Jim Smith have distilled an artisan “radioactive-free” vodka made from ingredients from the Exclusion Zone around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor … Continue reading Scientists distill radioactive-free vodka from Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
A study by researchers from the University of Exeter shows that staring at seagulls discourages them from stealing your chips. By placing a bag of the tasty fried potatoes on the ground and then staring at herring gulls trying to sneak up for… Continue reading Staring down seagulls deters chip theft
NASA has put a key component of its Orion deep-space probe through its paces, conducting a static firing of the spacecraft’s service module’s main engine at the space agency’s White Sands Test Facility near Las Cruces in New Mexico. The purpo… Continue reading NASA test fires Orion service module engine
The German Aerospace Center (DLR) is developing a new type of gyrocopter that gets rid of the pilot to provide more cargo space. The focus of the Automated Low Altitude Air Delivery (ALAADy) system, the ALAADy Demonstrator unmanned gyrocopter… Continue reading DLR develops unmanned gyrocopters to autonomously cart heavier cargo
Coastal wastewater treatment plants may be a nasty but necessary way to handle the effluent from our cities, but a new study by Stanford University indicates that they could also double as power plants to make them energy independent and carb… Continue reading "Blue power" could make wastewater plants energy-independent
Stand by to start space mining – not on an asteroid, but aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Delivered to the station by an unmanned Dragon cargo ship on July 27, an experimental mining kit developed by a team led by the University … Continue reading ISS receives prototype bacteria-based space mining kit
A new electronic tag developed by ESA and other partners has been attached to four tiger sharks in the Caribbean in a test of a new satellite-connected fish tracking system. Described by the space agency as cheaper and more animal friendly, t… Continue reading Satellite-connected tags keep more detailed tabs on tiger sharks for longer
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is halfway through its two-year primary mission and has completed its survey of the southern sky in its search for extrasolar planets. According to the space agency, the unmanned telescope h… Continue reading TESS completes survey of southern sky, marking halfway mark of mission
NASA’s Mars 2020 rover got a bit of a workout recently as it flexed its mechanical muscles. Captured in a time-lapse video, the 7-ft (2.1 m) robotic arm with its 88-lb (40-kg) “hand” did a bit of curling as space agency engineers guided it fr… Continue reading Mars 2020 rover flexes its arm ahead of 2020 launch