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All SpaceX wants to do this week is launch a rocket. Unfortunately, it seems like it won’t be able to do that, after a third attempted launch was scrubbed on Thursday morning. With poor weather forecasted for the next two days, SpaceX might not get a chance to try again until Saturday.View full post on TwitterThe payload on top of the SpaceX rocket sitting on the ground in Cape Canaveral is a $500 million GPS satellite from Lockheed Martin, and it was supposed to be in space on Tuesday....

Elon Musk released a trailer for a first quarter 2020 launch of his manned Crew Dragon capsule. Despite some 2019 setbacks, SpaceX insist the launch is on track for that timeframe.With NASA’s blessing and funding, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule represents the next generation of spaceflight.Elon Musk has shared a short (currently fictional) film he calls a “simulation” of what he hopes a successful SpaceX flight to the International Space Station will look like....

Eight years ago, Google announced a $30 million prize for the first team or teams to land a privately funded rover on the moon before the end of 2017. Sixteen teams have registered to compete for the Google Lunar XPRIZE, but now two teams have jumped out front of the rest with actual contracts to launch their probes in 2017.Israeli team SpaceIL landed a contract with SpaceX in October to use a Falcon 9 rocket to launch its probe, making them the first team with a launch contract confirmed by XPRIZE....

It’s been 100 years since World War I ended. To mark the occasion, director Peter Jackson took hundreds of hours of battlefield footage from the Imperial War Museum in London, updated it, and turned it into a moving documentary, They Shall Not Grow Old. Since none of the footage had sound, Jackson’s production company, Park Road Post Production, in New Zealand, added it in. “We wanted the full gamut of sounds,” Jackson says....

Heather Wilson is the 24th Secretary of the Air Force. On Wednesday, the Air Force released a report detailing its strategy for developing and deploying science and technology breakthroughs. More often than not, history speaks important truths if we are willing to listen. Back in the last 1940s and ‘50s, before most Americans were born, the United States military led the way on scientific achievements that kept us safe from a dangerous world....

Insects may seem like mere pests, but their physical abilities are still beyond even the most sophisticated robots. Engineers at the University of Washington have taken important first steps towards filling that gap by creating a robotic fly that has taken its first independent flaps. With the right size and speed, robotic insects could do anything from surveying crop growth to inspecting pipes for microscopic leaks. But the electronics needed for this type of sophisticated device have kept robotic insects tethered or weighed down....

Media Platforms Design TeamHome maintenance isn’t restricted to repairs. In fact, certain tasks–when performed regularly–may actually prevent things from breaking in the first place. But when things do go wrong (and it’s inevitable that they do), we have some backup plans that you can try before you grab the phone to call for pro. Appliances and plumbing are the most frequent offenders, but they also often can be the simplest to care for....

Media Platforms Design TeamWestlake, Calif. - In the midsize luxury class, which includes vehicles like the BMW 5 Series and Mercedes E-Class–there are no bad cars. In fact, none of the players are merely good. It’s a whole market segment comprising great and nearly great cars. And the differences between the great and the nearly great could be as small as a performance hiccup or a personality quirk. Into that maelstrom of excellence, Infiniti will later this spring launch its heavily revised, third-generation 2011 M sedan....

The Star Wars films are great escapist fantasies, and like all escapist fiction, it’s best not to think about it too much. The films take place, as the saying goes, “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,” where apparently almost everything is possible.Still, there are some things about the spaceships of the Star Wars movies that don’t make any sense if you think about them even a tiny bit....

When Kurt Luther, a Virginia Tech assistant professor of computer science, found a photo of a distance relative who had fought in the Civil War, he found a mystery, but also an opportunity. Using A.I, Luther hopes to connect modern people with Civil War relatives they might not have even known about using the Civil War Photo Sleuth.“Seeing my distant relative staring back at me was like traveling through time,” Luther says in a press statement, speaking about a Civil War-era portrait he found of Oliver Croxton, his great-great-great uncle who served in Company E of the 134th Regiment, Pennsylvania Infantry....

To learn about some of the mysterious creatures that live on the bottom of the sea, scientists are making them an offer they can’t refuse: free food. A team of researchers from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON) has been dropping dead alligators onto the ocean floor of the Gulf of Mexico to attract and study secretive lifeforms that call it home.View full post on YoutubeChief among these sea bottom dwellers are giant isopods, scientifically known as Bathynomus giganteus....

The invites are out and the date is official: Apple’s big iPhone 8 event will be happening on September 12th, and we’ll finally get to see what the button-free, full-screen future of the the most iconic smartphone looks like. There’s a lot on the menu for the Tuesday event, not least of which is the new iPhone, which may not be called the iPhone 8, but will assuredly have a full-screen face, no Home button, and a price tag of at least $1,000....

It’s June 3, 1965 and astronaut Ed White, in orbit over Hawaii, emerges from a space capsule to become the first American to conduct a extravehicular activity, or EVA. Connected with a single tether providing power and communication lines, he maneuvers using an oxygen gun for propulsion, takes in the view, and poses for pictures. “I feel like a million dollars,” White says.These days EVAs are not done for the photos, they are part of the maintenance and operation of the International Space Station....

Underwater, no one can hear you scream, not if they’re in a plane. The general impossibility of being able to bridge the gap from sonar to radio waves has been a problem for people looking to build underwater devices that communicate with the outside world, but new research from MIT might provide an answer.The surface of the ocean is a hard barrier for signals to cross. Above the water, communication typically happens using radio waves, which can travel through air for hundreds of miles....

Ever wonder how old and damaged film is converted into digital files ready for restoration? For the scoop, we asked Criss Austin, a motion picture preservation specialist with the National Archives and Records Administration who transferred all 15 hours of William Wyler’s 16mm Memphis Belle film footage to 4K for the World War II documentary The Cold Blue, which premieres June 6 on HBO.The film stock that William Wyler shot in 1943 has shrunk since it was created....

The Claim “Everyone loves the taste of a delicious, home-grown garden tomato, but planting a garden and trying to take care of it is backbreaking work. And after all that, your tomatoes can still end up on the ground, spoiled!” The Topsy Turvy horticulture apparatus “grows your tomato plants upside-down, so there’s no digging, weeding or bending over.” A suspended plastic sleeve holds soil and water as the live plant dangles out from the bottom....

It’s been over 160 days since Puerto Rico lost power during Hurricane Maria, and many parts of the island are still left in the dark. By far longest blackout in U.S. history, many people are developing creative solutions to fix it, and Duke Energy, a North Carolina-based energy company, is using commercial drones to rebuild the island’s energy infrastructure. A Duke Energy Zoe drone in Puerto Rico.Duke EnergySince mid-January, Duke Energy with its 200 volunteers have been clearing fallen power lines and constructing new lines across the island....

Media Platforms Design TeamIn this weekend’s new thriller Eagle Eye, the lives of Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf) and Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan) are hijacked by, well, a voice—an ominous and omniscient villainess that’s equal parts Inspector Gadget and GPS voiceover. Whoever’s behind the voice can control the traffic grid, see through every ATM machine and networked surveillance camera, call any cellphone, post a message on any electronic sign and even override the manual controls of cranes at construction sites....

Today was the kickoff for F8, Facebook’s annual developer conference and a platform for the social media behemoth to beat its chest a little and trot out its newest tricks. This year, augmented reality is the star of the show. But there’s something simmering beneath the surface of Facebook’s big push into AR. What’s this is all really about is how the next generation of advertising will burrow deep into your online life, using everything you do and share as a vector for its spread....

In 2013, Popular Mechanics contributor William Herkewitz covered the harrowing journey of a gargantuan electromagnet—one that would become a critical part of the upcoming Muon g-2 experiment—from the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., to the famed Fermilab, just outside Chicago.Now, almost 8 years later, researchers from Fermilab have announced the first results from that experiment: a tiny subatomic particle called a muon is breaking the fundamental rules of the Standard Model of particle physics and upending our understanding of the universe....