Cutting Edge

Flossie is one tough biker dude. He can ride in extreme temperatures. He doesn't get tired or saddle sore, and he is totally unflapped by the bike's searing noise as its engine screams away at speeds up to 16,000rpm. Yep, Flossie could pretty much leave any motorcycle gang in the dust.

Castrol, a maker of motorbike engine oils, is leaning on this headless robot rider to test its products' performance under conditions like increased power or acceleration. Flossie can be fitted onto any bike or scooter and comes equipped with a self-learning mode that lets him know … Read more

New NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, a respected former shuttle commander and retired Marine Corps major general, said Tuesday he's confident an ongoing presidential review of NASA's manned space program will not result in changes that would lengthen the projected five-year gap between the end of shuttle operations and the debut of a new rocket system to replace it.

While he would not say what sort of rocket system he favors--NASA's current Ares program or some alternative--Bolden said review Chairman Norman Augustine understands the critical need to replace the shuttle as soon as possible to minimize reliance on … Read more

An unseen comet or possibly an icy asteroid apparently crashed into Jupiter's atmosphere near the giant planet's south pole sometime during the last few days, creating a "gargantuan" blemish easily visible from Earth.

The presumed impact, discovered by Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley July 19 and confirmed by NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility at Mauna Kea, Hawaii, came almost 15 years to the day after multiple fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter in 1994.

"We're not sure how large this fragment could have been," Leigh Fletcher, a researcher at the Jet … Read more

The first man on the moon took a moment Monday, on the 40th anniversary of his "giant leap," to remember the Apollo program and the engineering triumph that won the Cold War space race and opened the door to the manned exploration of the solar system.

Speaking at an Apollo celebration at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, Neil Armstrong enjoyed a standing ovation before sharing his view of the achievement that carried him to the moon, concluding with a simple, heartfelt "Apollo was a good thing to do."

"Thank you so much,&… Read more

Venture capitalists are drawing their purse strings tighter than ever in reaction to the economic downturn.

Money from VCs to start-ups and IPOs sunk to $3.7 billion in the second quarter, a drop of 51 percent from $7.5 billion in the year-ago quarter. This marks the lowest ongoing level of venture capital funding over the past 12 years, according to a MoneyTree report released Tuesday by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). The report was based on statistics from Thomson Reuters.

Although VC spending rose slightly from the first quarter's $3.2 billion, the ongoing … Read more

The restart of the Large Hadron Collider has been pushed back even further, following the discovery of vacuum leaks in two sectors of the experiment.

The world's largest particle collider is now unlikely to restart before mid-November, according to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

The project had been expected to start again in October.

To repair the leaks, which are from the helium circuit into the insulating vacuum, sectors 8-1 and 2-3 will have to be warmed from 80K to room temperature. Adjacent sub-sectors will act as "floats," while the remainder of the surrounding sectors … Read more

JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Houston--Astronauts David Wolf and Thomas Marshburn carried out a successful six-hour, 53-minute spacewalk Monday, moving critical spare parts to the International Space Station as a hedge against failures after the shuttle is retired next year.

Crewmates inside, meanwhile, repaired the toilet in the U.S. lab module after a malfunction Sunday.

The spacewalk got under way at 10:27 a.m. CDT and ended at 5:20 p.m. It was the 127th excursion devoted to station assembly and maintenance since construction began in 1998, the eighth so far this year and the second of five planned … Read more

Google Earth can now take you to the moon.

Timed with the 40th anniversary of the first moon walk, the Internet giant on Monday released an addition to its Google Earth mapping software to provide images of moon landscapes and traces of human exploration there.

Called the Moon in Google Earth and available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, the software allows you to see topographical features on our closest celestial neighbor with the lunar equivalent of Google Street View. People can also see a gallery of the Apollo space missions and get information on every robotic spacecraft that has visited … Read more

JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Houston--The new toilet in the U.S. Destiny laboratory module aboard the International Space Station broke down Sunday, forcing the combined 13-member shuttle-station crew to share a single Russian toilet and one aboard the shuttle Endeavour until the problem is resolved.

"When you get a second, if you could put an out-of-service note on the WHC (waste and hygiene compartment) and advise the crew members that station crew members will have to use the (Russian toilet) and shuttle crew members on the shuttle until further notice," Hal Getzelman radioed from mission control.

European Space Agency … Read more