Tag Archives: Popular Mechanics

The official launch countdown for Saturday’s launch of Space Shuttle Discovery and STS-121 began today at 5 p.m. EDT, with the launch clock set at T-43 hours. But for many at NASA, the countdown has been running since last July, when a piece of foam fell off Discovery’s external tank (ET) during launch. NASA managers quickly grounded the entire fleet, including Discovery, barely into her first day in orbit. Continue reading →

The Hubble Space Telescope’s main camera has been offline since Monday, June 19, according to NASA. While scientists aren’t precisely sure why Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) reported invalid data and suspended operation, Ed Ruitberg, acting Hubble Space Telescope operations project manager at NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center, says engineers have been working to uncover why two of the three detectors in the ACS went into standby—cutting Hubble’s observation capacity in half. Continue reading →

Researchers at IBM and the Georgia Institute of Technology announced today that they have surpassed the speed record for silicon-based chips by using a new semiconductor that operates about 250 times faster than those powering chips today. Continue reading →

As seen in Popular Mechanics. Two years after NASA’s Genesis probe failed to deploy her parachute upon re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, investigators have found the culprit behind the crash: A design flaw resulted in the backwards installation of two … Continue reading →

European scientists unveiled a powerful new employee to help them in this millenium’s take on a space race to Mars and challenge U.S. exploration efforts of the planet: a robotic rover vehicle nicknamed “Bridget.” Continue reading →

As seen in Popular Mechanics. Competing with re-thought training wheels, parachute recovery systems, automatic candle extinguishers, off-road wheelchairs and every “Quad Zipper” in between, the winner of the History Channel’s Modern Marvels Invent Now Challenge wasn’t the flashiest invention on … Continue reading →

As seen in Popular Mechanics. Motorcyclists know how terrifying—and possibly fatal—a fall can be. Designed to complement the use of a helmet, Triple T Sales’ Hit-Air vest helps protect riders against serious injury by releasing inert gas into pockets in … Continue reading →

As seen in Popular Mechanics. We see some pretty handy tools here at PM, but when it comes to moving bulky items, this one biggest cake we can find. For fewer than $40, the Forearm Forklift uses simple physics to … Continue reading →

As seen in Popular Mechanics. Just what we all need: more 24. Apple Computer’s iTunes Music Store began selling Fox Entertainment programming yesterday in what is the store’s largest debut from a single network, adding 16 new series to the … Continue reading →

As seen in Popular Mechanics. As much as we like power tools, it seems some San Francisco fanatics have us beat. On Sunday afternoon at the Ace International Speedway, nearly 60 “bots” battled it out to reign supreme at the … Continue reading →

As seen in Popular Mechanics. For a cool $2 million, any human driver would obey traffic laws, merge correctly, stay in their lane, and avoid a crash at a busy intersection. But a robot? Well, that’s a different story. The … Continue reading →

As seen in Popular Mechanics. As the U.S. Air Force’s newest and priciest fighter, the F-22A Raptor is the most advanced aircraft in the sky—but that doesn’t mean it always works. Last week, the Department of Defense issued a statement … Continue reading →