New rocket engine could make trips to Mars realistic

A new NASA rocket engine, designed partly in Canada, raises the revolutionary possibility that a manned trip to Mars could take less than three months instead of two years.

Ion propulsion, discussed since the original Star Trek TV series, is now close to the point where it could be tested on a flight to the moon, says Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield.

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Next Stop: Ultracapacitor Buses

The best ultracapacitors can only store about 5 percent of the energy that lithium-ion batteries hold, limiting them to a couple of miles per charge. This makes them ineffective as an energy storage medium for passenger vehicles. But what ultracapacitors lack in range they make up in their ability to rapidly charge and discharge. So in vehicles that have to stop frequently and predictably as part of normal operation, energy storage based exclusively on ultracapacitors begins to make sense.

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GS1 Releases Guidelines for RFID-based Electronic Article Surveillance

EPCglobal, a subsidiary of global nonprofit standards organization GS1, has released its Strategic Overview Guide and Technical Implementation Guide for GS1 EPCglobal RFID-based Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS). The two documents provide the first guidance specifically for the production of RFID solutions that include EAS functionality based on EPCglobal's standards.

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Research reveals key to world's toughest organism

A new study by Cornell researchers uncovers the details of how the world's toughest bacterium survives lethal radiation exposure.

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Cooking Up Water From the Moon? NASA Studies Water Extraction With Microwaves

Intrigued by NASA lunar missions in the 1990s which suggested the existence of ice within craters at the moon's poles, NASA scientist Dr. Edwin Ethridge and his team started cooking up a way to extract water from lunar soil.

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Self-Steered Tractors and UAVs: Future Farming Is (Finally) Now

The new precision farmers are hacking together a way of making food in which the virtual and physical worlds are so tightly bound that having his tractor steered by GPS-guidance with inch-level accuracy is ho-hum. Autosteering of farm machinery has exploded over the past several years, according to an annual survey by Purdue University’s Center for Food and Agricultural Business. In 2004, just 5 percent of agricultural retail outlets offered autosteering. In 2008, more than half did.

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Scaffolding for skin

A scaffolding technology that could help scientists grow tissue such as skin in labs is being developed by researchers at Bristol University.

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General Motors Looks to Human Physiology for Powertrain Control

Electronic engine control takes cues from how the body regulates blood pressure.

Mother Nature is a technological genius. The latest group of researchers to seek out her wisdom is a team from General Motors’ Propulsion Systems Research Laboratory, in Warren, Mich., and

the University of Illinois at Chicago.

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Rolls-Royce engine takes next step towards take-off

The United States Air Force (USAF) has approved Rolls-Royce to move to the next phase in developing a jet engine capable of high performance but with low operating costs.
The Pentagon’s decision to proceed with phase two of development of the Adaptive Versatile Engine Technology (Advent) is seen as a huge boost for Rolls-Royce in the lucrative American military market.

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U-2 exceeds 25,000th hour of flight

U-2 aircraft No. 068-0337 was accepted by Air Force officials in 1968, and exceeded the 25,000th hour of flight Oct. 18, 2009, in a mission out of Southwest Asia.

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Europeans Find 32 New Planets Outside Solar System

European astronomers have found 32 new planets outside our solar system, adding evidence to the theory that the universe has many places where life could develop. Scientists using the European Southern Observatory telescope didn't find any planets quite the size of Earth or any that seemed habitable or even unusual. But their announcement increased the number of planets discovered outside the solar system to more than 400.

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US Military Orders 352 More Strykers

The 8×8 wheeled Stryker armored vehicle is the backbone of the US Army’s 7 medium armored brigades, with an 8th on the way. The base vehicle is also known as the LAV-III (Canada) and Piranha-III (GD MOWAG Switzerland), but American Stryker family APCs are outfitted with a set of communications and electronics equipment that makes them a unique variant.

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