You can’t bring your AC to space, unfortunately, but innovative flow boiling and condensation research might lead to lighter, more efficient heating and cooling on spacecraft.
Both the U.S. and China have plans to establish bases on the Moon in the near future.
Caspar Benson/fStop via Getty Images
China has invested massively in its space capabilities in recent years and is now a major competitor with the US. But according to a space policy expert, the US still dominates space by most measures.
Both Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are sending spacecrafts – and their billionaire founders – into suborbital flight. But what differentiates a suborbital flight from a trip around Earth?
Some UFO sightings appear to demonstrate ‘advanced technology’. The Pentagon has confirmed some threaten flight safety, and potentially national security.
A tiny speck of asteroid dust, circled, can only be manipulated by a glass needle.
ISAS JAXA
Voyager 2 launched in 1977 and visited all four gas giants in our Solar System. It’s now almost 18 billion kilometres from Earth and has finally joined its twin in interstellar space.
The Changzheng-2F rocket with the Shenzhou-10 manned spacecraft heading to Tiangong-1 in 2013.
EPA/STR
Using terrestrial forensic science to point the finger of blame to criminals in space will be much harder than it looks.
The idea that there’s a moral imperative for humans to expand beyond Earth is echoed by influential proponents of space exploration.
Tamara Craiu/Flickr
Technology had enabled humans to explore the deep sea, the Earth’s poles, and outer space. But we shouldn’t forget historical lessons about frontiers in the process of traversing them.
The SPARTAN re-usable space launch technology.
Thomas Keith
It’s an ambitious plan to send a micro-spaceship to our stellar neighbour but is this possible with today’s technology or even technology in the near future?
Are we soon to visit Alpha Centauri (left)?
Skatebiker/ Wikipedia
Building a tiny starship may be doable. The big challenge will be making sure it survives all the hazards in interstellar space.
New Horizons continues to help unravel the icy dwarf planet’s secrets.
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
After last summer’s Pluto flyby, the New Horizons spacecraft started sending data back to Earth – at 2 kilobits per second. Here’s some of what scientists have learned so far from that rich, slow cache.
The only way to fly the friendly skies – or dark voids of space.
Tom Simpson/Flickr
We’re on the cusp of being able to consistently launch and land rockets, greatly reducing the cost of space travel. But how long before there’s a Millennium Falcon in every garage?