I know science thinks it can do everything.

I know robots will soon be ordering us around like wait staff at the Ritz.

But I am gravely concerned about an experiment that has been going on up there in space.

Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, who returned to earth Friday, had been on the International Space Station since March. And, well, I don't know quite how I am to put this, but he didn't change his underwear for a month.

I know what you're thinking. We're both thinking the same thing.

Not even in the the darkest, … Read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--The shuttle Endeavour dropped out of orbit and glided back to Florida Friday, wrapping up a 16-day space station construction mission and bringing Japan's first long-duration astronaut back to Earth after four and a half months in weightlessness.

Descending through a partly cloudy sky, commander Mark Polansky pulled the shuttle's nose up just before reaching the runway, pilot Douglas Hurley deployed the spaceplane's landing gear and Endeavour settled to a picture-perfect landing at 10:48:08 a.m. EDT.

Barreling down the runway at more than 200 mph, Hurley released a red-and-white braking … Read more

In March, former Marine corporal Josh Maloney became the first Iraq war veteran and only the sixth American to receive a human hand, transplanted from an organ donor.

"He wanted to touch," said Patty Maloney, his mother. "He wanted to be able to feel again."

Four months later, the hand is actually starting to work.

"I can feel the soft touch up to there," he said. "I can feel hot and cold."

Maloney served two tours in Iraq, but came home and lost his hand in a training accident. He tried prosthetics, … Read more

Your local police may soon be packing flying surveillance bots. At the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit, Aeryon Labs President Dave Kroetsch gave a compelling pitch on his company, which makes a two-pound robot helicopter that has enough on-board intelligence and stability control to allow it to be flown by people who just point to locations on a Google Map-based interface.

The whole kit, including a table-based control module, fits in a suitcase-sized crate and can be quickly assembled in the field. After the user snaps the flying bot together, he or she just tells it where to go by pointing to … Read more

July has been quite a month for space lovers. From the launch of the Endeavour space shuttle and the anniversary of the first moon landing to the death of Walter Cronkite, the "Most Trusted Man in America" and a self-professed student of space exploration, we have seen our fair share of ups and downs this month.

And as the economy and health care continue to weigh heavily on our minds, it's space that has slowly made its way back to dinner tables across the United States.

Back in the 1960s, when Walter Cronkite was on the air almost every night, giving Americans updates on the NASA space program, people both young and old huddled around their televisions waiting to hear when (or if) we would get to the moon. Americans cared about space. They were interested. And they wanted to know as much as possible about it.

But after the moon landing in 1969, interest in NASA's space exploration started to fade. In recent years, some have spent more time calling on the federal government to shutter NASA rather than fund it. In 1969, such a suggestion seemed unfathomable.

And yet, just as those of us who still support space exploits thought it would only get worse, July brought on what I believe is the most discussion and enthusiasm about space that we've seen in a long time. And maybe (just maybe), it might return to its former place of glory.

Let's recap how it happened.… Read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--With pilot Douglas Hurley at the controls, the shuttle Endeavour undocked from the International Space Station Tuesday and slowly pulled away after a five-spacewalk construction mission, leaving the lab complex with a new Japanese experiment platform, fresh solar array batteries, critical spare parts, and a new flight engineer.

"Houston, station, (this is) Endeavour on the big loop, we have physical separation," an astronaut reported at 1:26 p.m. EDT as hooks and latches in the station's docking mechanism disengaged.

Joining Hurley aboard Endeavour were commander Mark Polansky, Canadian flight engineer Julie Payette, … Read more

IBM will buy analytics and information forecaster SPSS for $1.2 billion in cash, the companies said Tuesday.

IBM is paying $50 per share for the publicly traded company, which closed Monday on Nasdaq at $35.09. At 6:45 a.m. PDT, the stock had jumped to $49.16.

Chicago-based SPSS makes predictive-analytics software and solutions. Its products tap into vast amounts of customer information that companies can use to try to stay competitive.

Predictive-analytics software is used to gather opinions from customers, forecast future demand, and package the information into business analytics. By capturing and analyzing trends, the … Read more

JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Houston--Despite problems that forced spacewalk replanning, an impromptu toilet repair and work to fix the space station's carbon dioxide scrubber, the shuttle Endeavour's ongoing assembly mission is going well, the commander said Sunday, with most major objectives now accomplished. A fifth and final spacewalk is planned for Monday.

During four earlier spacewalks and near daily use of three robot arms on the shuttle and the space station, the astronauts have attached a large experiment platform to the Japanese Kibo lab module, installed research instruments and critical spare parts, replaced aging solar array batteries and deployed … Read more

Docked off San Francisco's Pier 27 and rocking calmly in the bay, the Okeanos Explorer awaits its return to sea.

The ship--once a U.S. Navy vessel now under control of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)--is in the midst of being outfitted exclusively for deep-ocean exploration and discovery. Its purpose will be to investigate unknown, misunderstood, and other below-the-surface phenomena. It is expected to be fully operational by next summer.

With up to 95 percent of the ocean unexplored, there are vast amounts of research for the ship to pursue. However, the Okeanos Explorer will have … Read more