The most expensive Lincoln penny in history was a 1943 copper-alloy cent that was sold for $US1.7 million in a 1996 auction. Nothing compared to this one, though. This penny is going be put on Mars for a nice $US2.5 billion. Not bad! More »
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to walk around on Mars? For 99.99999% of us, this may be as close as we ever get. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has given us the honour of taking the lid off of this awesome, interactive eye-candy. Basically it’s Google Earth, for Mars. More »
Today the next Mars rover will start its journey to the red planet. Only this time, NASA is sending something the size of a car. How the hell? More »
There’s a reason Curiosity’s fancy new Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator isn’t going to be installed until just days before its launch. It’s radioactive, powered by a special form of plutonium dioxide that won’t be rendered useless by the red planet’s dust issues. More »
Even as its twin goes dark, Opportunity soldiers on unabated: The plucky NASA Mars rover, on the planet for seven years now, just passed an impressive 30-kilometre milestone. More »
From the New York Times: Spirit has been incommunicado for more than a year despite daily calls by NASA. The cause of Spirit’s silence may never be known, but it’s likely the bitter Martian winter damaged its electronics, preventing the six-wheel rover from waking up.
The Boy Scouts, already no strangers to interesting, (if not controversial) modern-day badges like “video games,” have added what is an arguably more apt and useful skill to their badge-based repertoire: Robotics. More »
