Gadgetopia

Google Mars This map of Mars, published by Percival Lowell in 1895, was the result of many years spent carefully studying the Red Planet through his telescope. Now you can do the same through your web browser. In collaboration with NASA researchers at Arizona State University, we've created some of ...

NASA rethinking death in mission to Mars: There are some very sad questions you have to answer when you re sending someone to Mars. How do you get rid of the body of a dead astronaut on a three-year mission to Mars and back? When should the plug be pulled on ...

I must admit I was shocked to find out today the the Mars rovers are still quietly going about their business on the red planet. They're still plugging along climbing through craters and scratching rocks. The Spirit rover has travelled over two miles since it landed. The folks at JPL ...

Internet language runs real, virtual Mars rover: Spirit runs on Java. I wonder if Beagle was running .Net? Java, the software developed by Sun Microsystems in the mid-1990s as a universal platform for Internet applications, gave NASA a low-cost and easy-to-use option for running Spirit, the robotic rover that ...

NASA's Spirit rover recently reached it's "Mission Success" point, meeting all the goals that NASA had outlined for the mission. The rover is still doing science and going strong, but the turbo-geeks at JPL marked the occasion with a cool little Quicktime video showing how the rover has done its ...

SpaceShipOne captures X Prize: Yeah, baby. What a great headline. SpaceShipOne climbed into space for the second time in a week to claim the $10 million Ansari X Prize. X Prize officials said the privately funded craft reached 368,000 feet -- well into space -- Monday to win the $10 ...

The Mars Rover team had the interesting problem of needing their shifts to show up 39 minutes later each day, in order to keep in sync with the Martian solar day, which is 24 hours and 39 minutes long. To help, an expert watchmaker is creating special watches for them ...

Space.com has an article about the computers controlling the Mars rovers; turns out they're using RAD6000 processors, which are glorified PowerPC chips designed for the rigors of extra-terrestrial duty. Kissin' cousins to the G4 on my desk! "This has become a real workhorse for space missions," Scuderi said. "We currently ...

Scientists cling to hope Beagle 2 will phone home: I'm sorry, but I think it's gone. Europe's first Mars probe remained silent for a third day, but scientists clung to the hope Saturday that the Beagle 2 spacecraft had landed safely on the Red Planet and would respond to a ...

Hubble casualty of Bush space plan: Sometime in the future, we'll be mourning the poor Hubble Space Telescope. It was good while it lasted. The Hubble Space Telescope will be allowed to degrade and eventually become useless, as NASA changes focus to President Bush's plans to send humans to the ...

Doom: The Boardgame: Keep some towels handy to mop up all the blood from the kitchen table when you're done. Up to three players will take the roles of heavily armed and highly trained marines, while one player will control the legion of demonic invaders. In the game, the marine ...

Chris Barr Is Available On Thursday: I don't even know how to explain this. Who? Chris Barr is a graduate student in the Department of Media Studies at the University at Buffalo. What? Chris will perform the actions and events scheduled for him by the users of this web site. ...

Scientist Imagines Elevator Reaching 62,000 Miles Into Space: This seems so wrong on so many levels. President Bush wants to return to the moon and put a man on Mars. But scientist Bradley C. Edwards has an idea that's really out of this world: an elevator that climbs 62,000 miles ...

Here's a call to all software vendors: if you send a registration code or license key that I can copy out of an email, give me a field into which I can paste it. Look at the above window. They sent me a nice email from which I can copy ...