How does NASA remotely drive Mars Curiosity Rover?

The $2.5 billion dollar, nuclear powered Mars Curiosity Rover is not autonomous. On Earth, NASA engineers manually drive the robot around the surface of Mars. If you are picturing a NASA geek, red hand clinched tightly around a joystick, with a ear-to-ear grin – you’d only be partially correct. Driving Curiosity is not done in…

Scientists have just generated the world’s fastest laser light pulse, a beam that shoots for 67 attoseconds, or 0.000000000000000067 seconds. Such a quick burst is useful for allowing scientists to view extremely fast quantum mechanical processes, such as movement of electrons during chemical reactions. According to Wired magazine: To achieve their record-setting blast, the researchers…

Jupiter may have just taken a hit for us

Two separate sightings on Monday indicate something big happened on Jupiter. Two astronomers reported seeing a bright flash on the surface of Jupiter on Monday at 6:35 AM CDT. One astronomer, George Hall from Dallas, recorded the event which set the astronomer community abuzz.

On sol 33 (the 33rd Martian day), as one of the last steps in its inspection process, the Mars Curiosity Rover removed the clear dust cover from its camera lens (and put it back on for lens protection). The difference in picture clarity is remarkable. The pictures below were taken about five feet above the…

Curiosity Rover has certainly left its mark on the planet Mars. Photos taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have been released showing the tire tracks left by Curiosity on the planet’s surface. The bluish color spots are where Curiosity landed (named Bradbury landing after famous science fiction writer, Ray Bradbury) blowing Mars dust away from…

Scientists have discovered a strange star that is not aging normally and seems to remain every youthful. In the picture below, the glowing cluster of stars in the center (known as the “globular cluster”) are all stars that astronomers think formed in the universe’s distant past. Astronomers can determine a star’s age by the presence…

Are Chinese so smart because they drink Green Tea? Research just published in Molecular Nutrition & Food Research seems to indicate so. EGCG in green tea is the key. Professor Yun Bai from the Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China explained: Green tea is a popular beverage across the world. There has been plenty of…

As part of the Mars Science Lab Mission (MSL), Curiosity is now sending back telescopic images from Mars. This image is from a test series used to characterize the 100-millimeter Mast Camera on NASA’s Curiosity rover. It was taken on Aug. 23, 2012, and looks south-southwest from the rover’s landing site. The 100-millimeter Mastcam has…

The eyes have it: Men do see things differently to women

The way that the visual centers of men and women’s brains works is different, finds new research published in BioMed Central’s open access journal Biology of Sex Differences. Men have greater sensitivity to fine detail and rapidly moving stimuli, but women are better at discriminating between colors. In the brain there are high concentrations of…