Science

The $270 million Japanese satellite, Hitomi, launched earlier this year, has gone quiet, leaving scientists on the ground anxious to get back in touch with it. Although there has been some sporadic messages from the orbiting craft, no solid lines of communication have been opened up, with some wondering whether …

Graphene is a wonder material in oh so many ways and that seems likely to remain true for quite some time. In one of its more recent, exciting uses, the allotrope of carbon is now being used to create a wearable device that could help combat type II diabetes. The …

One of the biggest problems with getting anything into space is the costs involved in hauling every kilo up and out of the atmosphere. If every kilogram costs around £3,000 to get into orbit, imagine the costs involved in taking up the entire International Space Station over the years. One …

Among many advances, the biggest contribution Space X stands to make to humanity's space-faring efforts, is in bringing the cost down for launches. With its reusable Falcon 9 first stage rocket, Space X believes it can make savings on traditional launches of almost a third, once it nails the recovery …

As much as solar power might offer one of the most sustainable futures for our energy needs, its efficiency means that it can often take up a lot of space – that's a problem for a little country like the UK. One solution though, could be to put panels atop …

Astronaut Scott Kelley and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko have made it safely back to Earth after spending almost a year aboard the International Space Station (ISS). This represents one of the longest periods anyone has ever spent consecutively in space and will give scientists invaluable data on what effect such a …

Space X has a lot of planned launches in 2016, more so than any previous year in-fact – that's why it's now mass producing the Falcon 9 rocket. However the second launch attempt since the new-year has been rather problematic, with the commercial space venture cancelling its last two launch …

Every time we catch a glimpse of what Google owned robotics development firm Boston Dynamics is working on, it's always impressive. Whether we consider Big Dog, Little Dog or Cheetah, they're all amazing and terrifying in equal measure. The next-generation Atlas however, could be the most lifelike yet, with accurate bipedal …

Space X is ramping up production of its Falcon 9 rocket and to prove it, it showcased an image on its Instagram account of as many as five of the iconic boosters currently being constructed at its facilities. This comes just a few weeks after Space X COO, Gwynne Shotwell, …

Both Ancestry.com and 23andMe.com are services designed to help you trace your relatives or ancestors.  Customer data is sometimes requested by police to test it against crime scene evidence. Although this is par for the course with technology firms, these are two of only a few companies which store large collections …

The discovery of a new dinosaurs on a Welsh beach could help palaeontologists understand the evolutionary path taken by dinosaurs to become some of the most iconic  of the terrible lizards. Living some 200 million years ago, dracoraptor hanigani, could well be one of the early prototypes for the velociraptor, which …

The worldwide scientific community can consider itself one step closer to the goal of one day building a true nuclear fusion reactor, following a successful trial of plasma generation and stabilisation at the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator in Greifswald, Germany. Although the super-hot gas was only stabilised for a fraction of a …

A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has won the design contest for Elon Musk's Hyperloop concept, creating a sled-pod design that could one day house passengers as they speed across the world at more than 700 miles per hour. A prototype will now be built on a small …

Amid all the furore over who did what first between Space X and Blue Origin and repeated attempts by the former to land a rocket booster on its drone-barge, Space X CEO Elon Musk is still thinking about Mars. He's been doing that for a while in-fact and has some …

Scientific educator Bill Nye's Lightsail, crowd funded space-craft project is continuing apace. Following the successful test flight and opening in mid-2015, the final version of the fuel-free space craft is continuing development, with a completion of the latest round of testing, which used a base-station, known as BenchSat, to simulate …

Even without the billionaire sarcasm war between Space X CEO Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, there's no denying that Blue Origin's efforts to get people into space are still exciting. That's doubly so when launches can be repeated with the same hardware too, as it brings costs down …

No Pluto, it's not you. Go back to being the marvel of our recent far-flung photographic efforts. Astronomers do think there might be a ninth planet in our solar system though, but way beyond even the bounds of our dwarf-planet friend. We haven't seen it yet, but evidence in the …

Space X has once again narrowly missed out on a successful drone-ship landing of its Falcon 9 first stage booster rocket. Although the orbital launch vehicle did manage to touch back down on the automated platform, it only stood upright for a few seconds before toppling over and exploding on …

Although Space X spent much of 2015 not launching rockets after a singular failure, it's starting 2016 off with a bang by launching a new payload into orbit this weekend. Better yet, after proving that its Falcon 9 first stage booster can be landed back on land, it's going to …

NASA has been making a splash at this year's CES, but not by showing off technological developments like crew capsules or rocket engines, but with virtual reality. The American space agency brought along a number of VR and AR headsets and is using them to give the public an experience …

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg often starts the year off with a particular challenge, one that is publicly announced near the start of it. While previously the founder has pledged to read more books or meet more people, in 2016 he wants to turn his attention to artificial intelligence, leveraging his …

Although there were many great scientific breakthroughs in 2015, the most exciting for some came at the tail end of it. Space X's landing of a first stage rocket booster after separation represents a real turning point in space travel efficiency and thankfully, it looks like the rocket touched down …

Easily competing for this year's most hated person, Martin Shkreli drew a lot of disgust when his company purchased rights for an aids treatment drug, only to hike its price by 5,556 per cent to more than £500 a pill in the U.S. However he also drew attention from federal …

It looks like no matter whether you're in the school playground or a billionaire CEO of a space-faring company, the size of your rocket matters. Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon.com, has sparked a heated response from Space X fans, after sending a tweet to Elon Musk, in a …

Space X made history in the early hours of this morning, when it launched its new and improved Falcon 9 rocket into Low-Earth Orbit, separating the first stage booster part-way through the ascent, and returning it safely to Earth. This is Space X's first successful landing of the first stage …

“Punting 24 hours,” sounds like a very relaxed way to push back the launch of a $50 million rocket, but that's exactly what Space X CEO Elon Musk did on Sunday, via Twitter. His announcement means that the improved Falcon 9 rocket carrying 11 ORBCOMM satellites will instead head into …

It's been nearly six months since Space X has launched one of its Falcon 9 rockets, after the last one spectacularly exploded due to an overpressure event shortly after launch in June. But this week will see the commercial space venture testing a new and improved version of the rocket, …

The first British astronaut to head into space under the banner of the European Space Agency, Tim Peake, is set to launch into Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO) and join up with the International Space Station later today. He will be joined by American astronaut Tim Kopra, and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko aboard …

The International Space Station is one of mankind's greatest feats of science and engineering, but unlike architecture of old, its shelf life is far, far shorter. In-fact NASA plans to abandon it by the end of the 2020s as it begins to move beyond Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO), but to continue tests and …

Space X and Tesla founder Elon Musk has called on students and citizens to lobby their government to introduce a ‘carbon price' to help hurry along commercial industries in making their businesses cleaner and to encourage the development of new renewable energy sources. Removing subsidies for traditional energy would cut …