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NASA’s InSight Lander has only been on the surface of Mars for a few months, but it seems to already be running into problems. According to an announcement from NASA, the lander’s ground probe, which was designed to tunnel several feet into the ground, has hit some sort of obstacle and gotten stuck.NASA’s InSight lander is a bit different from a typical NASA mission to Mars. Insight is a stationary lander primarily designed to carry one scientific instrument: a probe several feet long intended to bury itself several feet into the ground....

Sears is not being liquidated, at least not immediately. Sears Holdings Corp Chairman Eddie Lampert was able to win a bankruptcy auction for the retailer with a $5.2 billion bid, Reuters reports.Related StorySears Declared Bankruptcy And I Already Miss It The deal follows a series of behind-closed-doors negotiations that seemed likely to turn in favor of total liquidation until Lampert won out by upping the value of his buyouts with both cash and a willingness to take on additional liability for the 126-year-old company which employs 45,000 at some 425 stores....

It must have been 1978. I must’ve seen Star Wars a few weeks before my birthday in February, because I think it was a Christmas film here in the UK. Back then, it could take six months for an American film to reach London, and then weeks more for it to move from the cities to the towns, and I lived in a village that sat an hour’s bus ride from the nearest town with a cinema....

Media Platforms Design TeamDARPA has chosen Northrop Grumman to build for the Pentagon a long-range drone that can fly from smaller U.S. Navy ships. The drone, known as TERN, resembles experimental tail-sitting aircraft from the 1950s. TERN stands for Tactically Exploited Reconnaissance Node program. The name is a lot to unpack, but basically, the TERN program seeks to put medium altitude, long endurance unmanned aerial vehicles on U.S. Navy ships, where sailors can operate them from helicopter flight decks....

Ten tons of fireworks seized by federal officials exploded Monday in a court-ordered demolition, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives caught the sustained blast on camera.The video was posted on the Facebook page of the Midland Police Department, which worked with the BATF and used the demolition as a training opportunity for bomb squad.On Facebook, the police department wrote, “This disposal was very informative for our bomb techs who are charged with handling explosives....

Today at 10:21 AM ET, a Falcon 9 rocket will lift off from Cape Canaveral, carrying supplies to the International Space Station. Shortly afterwards, SpaceX will once again attempt to land the first stage of the rocket on a barge floating out in the Atlantic Ocean. After two almost-but-not-quite attempts, the company is hoping for a big win this time.As the weather in Central Florida is a bit unpredictable, and things are especially touchy with a rocket landing on the line, but all systems are go....

America’s next aircraft carrier, the USS John F. Kennedy, reached a major construction milestone last week. The island, one of the most emblematic features of naval aviation, was lifted into place onto the ship’s hull. The island is the center of flight operations on an aircraft carrier, controlling takeoffs, landings, and the delicate movement of aircraft and personnel on the potentially deadly flight deck.View full post on YoutubeModern U.S. warships are built on dry land in so-called “superlifts,” then lifted into drydock by crane and welded together, piece by piece....

Sonoluminescence is when sound waves trap bubbles, eventually making a force so great they produce light.Scientists are still unsure how this works.Regardless, one YouTuber was able to recreate it.One of the more obscure properties of water is called sonoluminescence. Just as bioluminescence is when light comes from a living animal or plant, sonoluminescence is when light emerges out of sound. Sound waves trap small bubbles within water, making them shrink, expand, and eventually give off a flash of light....

A wave pool produced a massive tsunami-like wave that injured 44 people and sent a few of them to the hospital.The incident occurred in China’s Yulong Shuiyun Water Amusement Park which is investigating why the attraction malfunctioned.The wave pool will remain closed until the investigation is complete.People typically enjoy wave pools because they’re relaxing—or at least they’re supposed to be. This was not the case in China where wave pool goers were savagely attacked by a monstrous tsunami-like wave produced by a water park pool....

The Lotus Elan and the Black & Decker Workmate have one thing in common: Both were designed by Ronald Hickman, a South African who left his native country to design cars in England. He was also an avid tinkerer and an amateur builder. While working on a DIY project at home in 1961, he was sawing a piece of lumber on an expensive chair and sawed into its leg. Most people might have purchased a sawhorse at that point....

Media Platforms Design TeamAdrenaline-junkies, feast your eyes on this. This animated video gives a first-hand look at “The Skyscraper,” a terrifying, 570-foot giant with steep spirals that will propel riders to speeds of 65 mph.“Skyscraper will not only take riders higher than ever before, but also introduce one thrill right after the next—there’s no ‘down time’ on this four-minute coaster experience,” Michael Kitchen, president of US Thrill Rides, told the Orlando Sentinel....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Pentagon’s mad scientists at DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) want to revolutionize auto manufacturing by using an enormous library of digitally rendered mechanical parts to bring a new vehicle from conception to manufacture in as little as one-fifth the typical time. The effort is called the Adaptive Vehicle Make program, or AVM. And now DARPA is giving auto engineers and wannabes alike the chance to compete for $4 million in prizes to prove out the concept....

There is something wonderful about the very specific and undiscovered subreddit.So it was a special delight to stumble across /r/Explosion_Gfys, a small community dedicated to one thing: beautiful, beautiful explosions. The rules, as the mods put them, are simple: “Explosions must be real. No CGI or explosions from TV or movies.” We like those rules. Here are 12 of our favorites:View full post on IframeFrom San Diego, we bring you a very short but very energetic fireworks display on the Fourth of July in 2012....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn-Sale Date: March 16Price: $23,900-$36,200 Competitors: Hyundai Veloster Turbo, Nissan Juke, Range Rover Evoque, Volkswagen GTIPowertrains: 1.6-liter I-4, 121 hp, 118 lb-ft; 1.6-liter turbocharged I-4, 181 hp, 192 lb-ft; 1.6-liter turbocharged I-4, 208 hp, 221 lb-ft; 6-speed manual, 6-speed automatic, FWD or AWDEPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy): 25-27/30-35 (Cooper); 25-26/32 (Cooper S); 23-25/30-31 (John Cooper Works) What’s New: New is an elastic term at Mini, where two versions of one basic architecture and three versions of one engine have now morphed into seven different models, with more in the pipeline....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Coast Guard and mobile drill units sit above the Deepwater Horizon oil spill as BP attempts a “top kill.” (Photo by Patrick Kelley/U.S. Coast Guard via Getty Images) After more than a month of setbacks, something good is happening in the Gulf of Mexico—the top kill appears to be working*. Heavy mud is being injected from surface vessels, down mile-long lines into the subsea well, which has been gushing between 5000 to 19,000 barrels of oil daily since an explosion sank the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform in April....

Airbus conducted the first flight of the A321LR (long range) on Wednesday, January 31. The jet is the newest in Airbus’s A320neo (new engine option) family, and has the longest range of any single-aisle commercial aircraft at 4,000 nautical miles. For comparison, the A321LR’s main competitor, the Boeing 737 MAX 7, can fly 3,850 nm.Fuel efficiency and range on smaller, single-aisle aircraft keep getting better, which is one big reason airlines are moving away from the the large jumbo jets they used to rely on for long transoceanic flights....

Media Platforms Design TeamChristopher Nolan’s Batman movies begin in the director’s garage. “We always get into a film by designing the vehicle,” production designer Nathan Crowley says. For The Dark Knight Rises, out July 20, Nolan wanted Batman to add an aircraft to his fleet. “I like jump jets and Chris likes the Osprey,” Crowley says. “So we said, okay, let’s try and mix the two and make the craft look like the Batmobile....

Media Platforms Design Team Test your car appeal sharpness. Chevrolet just unveiled three minicar concepts at the New York auto show that GM will use to test customer appeal. All three concepts, called Trax, Groove and Beat were designed at the Seoul, Korea, design studio. Where you come in is with a chance to vote for your favorite among the three. Chevy will soon have a website running at vote4chevrolet.com where you can register to vote for your favorite....

On-demand streaming services like Netflix and Hulu have forever altered the ways in which we consume and interact with media. Everything from our favorite shows to blockbuster movies are now available at the click of a button, and with more titles being added to these services every day, keeping a traditional cable connection makes increasingly less sense.But there are still some titles and sporting events that aren’t available online—making it difficult for some people to cut that cord once and for all....

In the eight decades since the birth of the electric guitar, the tuning mechanism has been left largely untouched–players still must carefully turn each peg to achieve the right pitch. Tedious? Absolutely. But what’s worse is that it doesn’t even work that well. Factors like heat and stretched strings make staying in tune nearly impossible. The Gibson Robot Guitar ($2499) puts an end to the manual peg-twisting–it uses microprocessors and motors to automatically tune the strings in seconds....