Science

Founder of both Tesla and Space X, Elon Musk, takes his tongue-in-cheek role as the world's good-guy super-villain quite seriously. 10 years ago he released his ‘Master Plan' which he's mostly achieved since and now it's time for “Master Plan Part Deux,” which will take electric cars and solar power …

Travelling into space, even for a few minutes, is incredibly dangerous. There is the lack of oxygen to consider, radiation from the sun and if you're returning to Earth, extreme speed and heat too. Fortunately then if you took Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin craft beyond our atmosphere, you'd be safe …

Space X has completed two major stages in its latest launch mission, sending a new docking port to the International Space Station (ISS). The payload has successfully been delivered into orbit around the Earth and the first stage booster has landed back on solid ground, marking only the second time …

Although the fate of Germany in this year's European Championship is still set to be decided, the German robot football team's is far more certain: they are the champions. The American team opposite them in the finals put up a good fight, but when it came down to penalties, the …

The NASA Juno satellite which left the confines of Earth's atmosphere five years ago, has completed its retrograde burn to bring it into Jupiter's orbit. Although there was some concern that the radiation belt surrounding the gas giant could cause damage to the space craft during its approach, the orbital …

Space X has hit a major new mile stone and for once it has nothing to do with it landing a Falcon 9 rocket on a barge. NASA has ordered the commercial space venture to fly some of its astronauts to the International Space Centre, marking the first time that Space …

With plans still on track to land a rover on the far side of the moon in 2018, Chinese scientists continue to impress with their rocketry advances. Over the weekend it successfully launched its latest rocket design, from a new launch centre with new fuel combinations. Although ventures into space …

Watch out for banana peels, but if you can keep your floor clean, Boston Dynamics' new robot, Spot Mini, is capable of navigating around your home, loading the dishwasher, throwing rubbish in the bin and avoiding your feet as it sneaks under the table. Just don't feed it scraps, you …

Who needs working legs when you can combine all of the horrifying names from sci-fi movies where robots went awry and create a set of robo-legs that walk for you? That's exactly what the Cyberdeyne HAL system is and it utilised Intel hardware to become a reality. As nefarious as …

Blue Origin's new Shepherd has once again launched and landed successfully, making this the fourth re-use of the same rocket hardware. This not only continues to prove the viability of the passenger rocket, but showed that even with a deliberate parachute failure, the capsule can come down safely. [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYYTuZCjZcE'] …

Yesterday Space X once again sent up a Falcon 9 rocket to deliver a payload into Near Earth Orbit. That all went to plan, but on attempting to recover its fourth first-stage booster rocket in a row, a problem during the landing caused a rapid unscheduled disassembly (RUD), which in …

As a big proponent for a manned mission to Mars and the colonisation of the red planet, you might expect Elon Musk to wrap up his ideas in PR positivism, but that's not the case. In a recent interview, he claimed that the first missions to Mars will be very …

Remember back in April when Space X prepared and launched an inflatable habitat to the International Space Station (ISS)? Well it's now firmly attached and orbiting Earth in the inky blackness of space while entirely inflated. It's quite roomy in there and NASA has released some images of its interior …

Along with its continual efforts to reduce the cost of rocket launches in a meaningful way, Space X has also previously discussed the possibility of making high-speed, wireless internet available to all. However it's now having to defend its reserved part of the spectrum from those who would use it …

Space X has now brought four of its Falcon 9 first-stage booster rockets home to its facility in the launch Complex 39 at Cape Canaveral. This is four in a row now for Space X and it plans to perform its first re-launch with one of these rockets in September …

Even though Oculus and HTC/Valve did a great job of slimming down the lenses used in the new generation of VR headsets, they're still one of the reasons the headsets are as big and as thick as they are. That could well change with the second generation though, as a …

Last Friday saw Space X once again successfully touch down its Falcon 9 first-stage rocket on its automated-drone barge, after delivering its payload into orbit. The newly released video of the event shows off the entire descent, from re-entry burn, to suicide burn just above the landing pad. The video …

One of the big issues facing the natural world is human deforestation on an industrial scale. Illegal logging, land clearance and habitat destruction are causing all sorts of issues that seem near impossible to stop. One solution though, could be utilising drone power to plant trees on a previously unheard …

Hyperloop transport is a very futuristic sounding method of traversing large distances in exceedingly short time-spans, but it's looking more and more like a feasible technology. On top of one firm pursuing it achieving a licensing deal for its technology, another, Hyperloop One, has secured another $80 million in funding. …

It was no fluke when Space X landed its Falcon 9 first stage rocket on its automated drone barge last month, as it's managed to do it again. This time following stage separation, sending the JCSAT-14 payload off into orbit, the first stage booster returned to Earth, landing smoothly on …

For many scientists, physicists and fans of space venturing, getting to Mars could be the most important thing we do in the 21st century. But we have a long way to go before touching human feet on the red planet, so perhaps the best way to prepare the way for …

While the world of mainstream computing seems to have finally caught on that an SSD is the only place to put your operating system, some companies are already looking to the future of long-term storage. One solution Microsoft is experimenting with, is very different than the norm: DNA storage and …

For the first time in more than a decade, a company other than Boeing or Lockheed Martin will be launching American military hardware into orbit, ending a monopoly the two had created in a very lucrative industry. The company that dismantled that long-running tradition? Space X, the relatively young space …

Although the big, scary and complex journey for the Space X Falcon 9 rocket was its launch and recovery on the drone barge earlier this month, it still had to take a trip to Space X's facility at the Kennedy Space Centre. After many days of travel on the back …

Staple of prank videos, art shows and magazine photoshoots the world over, clothing-feigning bodypaint is always quite an impressive show of how easy it is to trick the human eye. But we may do away with it and perhaps even clothes altogether one day, as a new type of ‘E-Skin' …

One of the biggest difficulties with putting space craft outside of Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO) is that it gets ever more difficult to maintain it. Repairs are too costly to attempt in person, so the best we can often hope for are software tweaks – but even they take a long time …

Space travel might be difficult and expensive, but sometimes everything goes to plan. That's what happened in the case of Space X's launch last week, which used a Falcon 9 to send a payload bound for the International Space Station into orbit, before touching back down on a drone barge. …

Following a successful testing of the Falcon 9 rocket engines and a readiness review the day after, Space X's latest launch is all set to go ahead at 4:43pm ET (8:43PM GMT) today, 8th April. The mission is set to carry supplies up to the International Space Station (ISS), as well …

In the ever more exciting space race to commercialise the waters beyond the shore of our cosmic ocean, Amazon has again re-launched its Blue Origin space craft out of our atmosphere and safely returned it to Earth. This time though, it completed a suicide burn, saving fuel, improving efficiency and still …

Oxygen has quite an important part to play in life on Earth, but it can also be found in reasonable quantities around the universe. Rarely though is it seen in high concentrations and certainly not on the surface of a star, at near 100 per cent saturation, but that's exactly …