Before they’re strapped onto rockets for a mission to Mars, ion engines, like NASA’s VASIMR project need to be tested–here at the STG-ET chamber at the German Aerospace Agency (DLR), one of the most advanced vacuum chambers on the planet.
Germany’s aerospace agency, the DLR, has this robot they like to call Rollin’ Justin. Recently they’ve improved his object tracking and tacticle sensors so much that it’s able to catch objects on the fly. It’ll even catch two balls at once!
Do you know why James T. Kirk is happy? Because those crazy Europeans are developing a magnetic shield that will protect spaceships when entering the Earth’s atmosphere. Well, that and because he’s thinking about doing naughty things with Uhura.
It looks like the Europervs got a bad case of penis envy: They are now working on a suborbital plane–in the image–similar to the SpaceShipTwo and a hypersonic passenger plane called SpaceLiner.
