Why Building The Death Star Is A Bad Investment 
North Korea Defies World, Launches Rocket (Updated: It Failed) 
US Warns Australia On North Korean Rocket 
South Africa Will Likely Trump Australia In $2.5 Billion Radio Telescope Bid 
Japan Plans To Have A Space Elevator By 2050 
How The Biggest Solar Storm Since 2005 Is Going To Affect You Scientists tell us that our universe is trillions of kilometres wide, but how exactly do they come to that measurement without an equally long tape measure? As this beautifully animated video explains, they do it by using similar techniques for measuring distant objects here on Earth.
I refuse to believe this image of the eclipse is real, as much as I wish it is. Not that it couldn’t be real. It can. I’ve seen plenty of photos of eclipses taken from space, but this one is just too awesome to be real.
They say the first time never lasts as long as you’d want. Yesterday’s failed SpaceX Falcon 9 launch is no exception.
Before it could slip the surly bonds of earth and dance the skies on laughter-silvered wings, SpaceX’s Falcon 9′s early morning launch was unfortunately scrapped by Nasa today due to higher than normal pressure readings in its number five engine.
Until just a few years ago, manned spaceflight was the exclusive sandbox of not just nations, but of the world’s select superpowers — the countries with enough disposable income to say, “F**k it. Let’s go to the Moon.” Those days are over, sadly, slowly smothered by shrinking budgets and realigning priorities.
The Washburn Observatory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been the school’s scientific centrepiece since its commissioning in 1881. The same year that was, coincidentally, the last time anybody bothered to clean the optics.
Marvel’s web-slinger is able to scale tall buildings thanks to a set of spiny hairs on his fingers. And NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory thinks the same approach could make it easy for spacecraft to latch onto asteroids, comets and other irregularly shaped rocks.
