Stories

This week's Question: After more than three years of construction, Virgin Galactic unveiled its new spaceship at the Mojave Air & Space Port in California. Physicist Stephen Hawking named the new vehicle Virgin Spaceship (VSS) Unity. Although the spacecraft faces an extensive testing period, the company...

In the 1960s, the newly formed NASA began issuing single-sheet reports on the commercially significant technologies the agency was developing in the course of R&D being conducted for the space program – a mandate from Congress. In 1976, NASA turned those single-sheet reports into a magazine format...

This week's Question: The market for smartwatches and fitness bands is growing, but how effective are today's wearable health devices? A study from Lancaster University, the University of the West of England, and Nottingham Trent says that the technologies are marketed under the premise that they will help...

This week's Question: A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) team took top honors this month at a competition to design the Hyperloop, a high-speed transportation concept from Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. In the absence of air or surface friction, the Hyperloop design enables passenger pods to...

This week's Question: Canadian industrial designer Charles Bombardier has developed an aircraft concept that, in theory, could send passengers from London to New York in 11 minutes. The "Antipode" would have a scramjet engine and wings fitted with rocket boosters, propelling the aircraft to 40,000 feet and enabling the...

This week's Question: The U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) unveiled plans last week to develop a "brain modem." The implantable neural interface allows wearers to transmit data from their brains to external digital devices. DARPA's goal is to achieve this communications link in...

This week's Question: Researchers at the NASA Glenn Research Center are developing a hybrid plane that will, like a hybrid car, rely on both fossil fuels and electricity to power itself through the sky. The NASA engineers are looking at power systems that generate electricity in place of, or in addition...