Just what the hell is going on here? A piece of candy under the microscope? An oil slick? Are we all on drugs right now? No — well, maybe you are — but this picture isn’t the result. It’s from spaaa-aaace. More »
If I was one of these Mars500 crew members who spent over 250 days sitting in a room as part of a simulated journey to the red planet, and this was the best Fake Mars the European Space Agency could come up with, I’d be pissed. Keep in mind they have to go back in that room for another 200+ days after they finish their “mission”, which you can check out in video form: More »
Biometric devices and personal electronics have increasingly become intertwined over the years, but few have merged the two ideas as seamlessly as these headphones, which can also measure your heart rate. More »
The European Space Agency study testing the psychological effects of a 520-day trip to Mars began today. In other words, six poor suckers have been locked in a room and they can’t come out for 18 months. [BBC]
A group of 6 volunteers just finished a simulated 105-day mission to Mars. Completely stuck on the ground, the subjects were essentially locked in a room so that researchers could gauge the psychological impact of isolation. More »
The European Space Agency is launching the first Automated Transfer Vehicle tomorrow in French Guyana. Though it looks like a satellite, the ATV, christened Jules Verne, is really an unmanned cargo-hauling robot capable of carting 7.6 tons of supplies and other astro-crap up from earth, and even tow the International Space Station itself to a higher orbit. And it’ll do a lot of this stuff with no guidance from the carbon units:
