It’s a frustrated commuter’s escapist fantasy: literally lifting your car out of a clogged highway and soaring through the skies, landing just in time to motor into your driveway. Researchers stress that the ultimate dream
July 8th, 2004
Museum Hosts Translucent Concrete Display
It used to be only Superman who could see through concrete walls, but an exhibit at the National Building Museum shows mere mortals can do it too. Called “Liquid Stone,” the show features variations of translucent concrete, a newfangled version of the old construction standby that offers a combination of aesthetics and practicality.
June 25th, 2004
Scientist Sees Space Elevator in 15 Years
President Bush wants to return to the moon and put a man on Mars. But scientist Bradley C. Edwards has an idea that’s really out of this world: an elevator that climbs 62,000 miles into space. Edwards thinks an initial version could be operating in 15 years, a year earlier than Bush’s 2020 timetable for a return to the moon. He pegs the cost at $10 billion, a pittance compared with other space endeavors.
May 30th, 2004
Mars rover Opportunity endures ‘deep sleep’ with no harm
NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity endured a martian winter night despite being put into a new energy-saving but risky “deep sleep” mode, a mission flight director said Friday.
May 10th, 2004
Russian Says Mars Mission Is Realistic
Russia’s new space agency chief said Monday that a manned mission to Mars in the near future is realistic provided funding is adequate, and appeared to express support for an ambitious plan to visit the planet within a decade, the Interfax news agency reported.
“The project is very interesting and I am not turning it down,” Interfax quoted space agency chief Anatoly Perminov as saying in Berlin, apparently referring to a plan announced last month to send a six-man crew to Mars.
April 26th, 2004
Utah Is Practice Site for Mars Mission
While robots have been scurrying around Mars for months, researchers here on Earth have been trying to make a little bit of Utah seem more like the Red Planet. Six-member teams have spent weeks in a silo-shaped module here trying to simulate what astronauts might endure should they ever wander Mars. Researchers even strap on air packs and 30-pound boots when they step outside.
April 13th, 2004
NASA Gives Mars Rovers Software Upgrade
NASA said Tuesday it has beamed new software to its twin Mars rovers that should allow the six-wheeled vehicles to travel farther, sleep better and avoid the type of computer glitches that temporarily paralyzed one of them.
April 12th, 2004
Putin Calls for Demilitarization of Space
President Vladimir Putin on Monday reaffirmed his support for the demilitarization of space but added that Russia must be ready to counter others’ moves to the contrary. In a speech to top space officials on Cosmonauts Day, which marks the 43rd anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s epochal spaceflight, Putin also hailed the Soviet Union’s space glory and emphasized that space research remains a top priority for the government.
April 9th, 2004
Russian Group Plans Men on Mars by 2011
A group of Russian space experts on Friday announced an ambitious plan to send a six-man crew to Mars within a decade, a project it said would cost only $3.5 billion. Russian space officials dismissed the project as nonsense. A researcher at the Central Research Institute for Machine-Building, Russia’s premier authority on space equipment design, said it would carry out the project with funding promised by Aerospace Systems, a little-known private Russian company that says it draws no resources from the state budget.
April 2nd, 2004
Mars Rover Finds More Signs of Past Water
NASA’s Spirit rover uncovered more evidence that there was once water on Mars, although not in the quantities its twin Opportunity found traces of halfway around the planet last month, the space agency said Thursday.