Cutting Edge

The U.S. Department of Defense has contracted for the development of bullet resistant windows that dim instantly with a touch of a button, providing "on-demand" light control, privacy, and protection from heat, glare, and ultraviolet rays.

GKN Aerospace was awarded the $425,000 contract by the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office's VIP Protection Subgroup to incorporate dimmable films with armored glass to provide a "SmartShade" that conceals the location and identity of VIPs traveling in armored vehicles.

The Redditch, U.K.-based company will wed its bullet resistant glazing expertise with a "suspended … Read more

With the future of NASA's embattled moon program in doubt, Alliant Techsystems test-fired a huge five-segment solid-fuel booster in Utah Thursday, a ground-shaking demonstration designed to collect performance data for a new rocket intended to replace the space shuttle.

Generating 22 million horsepower, the lengthened 154-foot-long shuttle booster ignited with a torrent of flame at 3 p.m. EDT, sending a towering column of dirty brown exhaust into the Utah sky as hundreds of spectators looked on. Two minutes later, after consuming 1.4 million pounds of solid propellant, the rocket burned out.

"After witnessing what we just … Read more

The Japanese space agency launched a powerful new rocket Thursday carrying an unmanned space station cargo ship on a complex maiden voyage to deliver some 7,400 pounds of equipment and supplies to the orbital outpost.

With four strap-on boosters gushing white-hot exhaust and a pair of hydrogen-fueled main engines roaring at full throttle, the H-2B rocket thundered away from launch pad 2 at the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan at 1:01:46 p.m. EDT.

"The launch was beautiful," Stephen Clark, a U.S. journalist representing Spaceflight Now, said in an instant message from Tanegashima. &… Read more

Japanese design firm Flower Robotics has unveiled a new concept robot cell phone that moves around on two wheels and learns from user behavior.

Flower teamed up with telecom KDDI and its Iida line of products to create the device, dubbed Polaris. In the Japanese video below it looks like a cousin of the Sony Rolly MP3 player, but Polaris is more than just a pair of wheels and electronics.

Polaris consists of a robot sphere and the phone itself. The sphere can autonomously dock with its charging unit. The phone gathers information about user behavior and sends it to … Read more

NASA scientists showed off spectacular new pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope Wednesday, a stunning gallery of remote galaxies, a stellar nursery, an enormous globular cluster packed with countless pinpoint stars, and a dying sun blowing off its outer atmosphere in butterfly-like wings of debris.

The pictures clearly show the fabled telescope is back in action, ready to resume its role as one of the most productive observatories on or off the planet, thanks to a dramatic five-spacewalk shuttle repair mission last May.

"Every field of astrophysics, whether it's our local neighborhood of planets, nearby stars and their … Read more

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced this week that it has finally completed a nine-year, $180 million project aimed at installing new supercomputers to aid in more accurately predicting weather. The primary IBM supercomputer is now called Stratus. Its backup is dubbed Cirrus.

The new supercomputers, based on IBM Power 575 Systems, are capable of making 69.7 trillion calculations per second. According to NOAA, the faster the calculation speeds, the greater the chances that meteorologists can rapidly update severe weather forecasts as dangerous weather affects local communities. Billions of bytes are entered into the supercomputers each day to help predict the weather more accurately.

Just how important NOAA's new supercomputers are to our understanding and prediction of weather is easily understated.

Right now, Stratus contains about 20 weather models that predict worldwide weather accurately for about five days. A few decades ago, weather models could forecast weather accurately up to only about two days.

Those 20 weather models rarely change. They analyze conditions such as temperature, humidity, and precipitation to give organizations ranging from the National Weather Service to local meteorologists data on which they can base forecasts.

According to Ben Kyger, director of central operations for the National Center of Environmental Prediction, a division of NOAA, "We analyze weather conditions on grids we lay over maps of the world. In order for meteorologists to accurately predict a hurricane's path, for example, NOAA needs to pinpoint weather conditions in 1-kilometer grids of distance." Right now, those spans "are not even close to that."

How does it work? In order to improve forecasting, a lot of work needs to be done. Right now, scientists from around the world are analyzing Stratus' weather models to find ways to improve them. When they think that they've come up with an improvement, NOAA analyzes the new models.

If it likes what it sees, NOAA takes it open source. It installs the new model on the Cirrus supercomputer to run in parallel with the approved model on Stratus. Scientists, weather experts, and even you and I can view the new model and inspect it for errors. Errors found are removed or tweaked. If no errors can be found, and the new data enhances weather forecasting, it will be put into operation and replace the existing model that it improved upon.… Read more

Velcro's great, but for when you need that extra hold, there's a new hook and loop fastener made from spring steel in Germany that can pinch together loads of up to 35 metric tons, according to researchers.

The uber-Velcro, dubbed Metaklett, is also chemical-resistant and can withstand temperatures of nearly 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit, according to developers at the Institute of Metal Forming and Casting, Technical University Munich (TUM).

Although Velcro and its knockoffs have been used on everything from shoes to space shuttles since its invention by Swiss engineer George de Mestral 60 years ago, it has … Read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--With pilot Kevin Ford at the controls, the shuttle Discovery undocked from the International Space Station on Tuesday after delivering a fresh crew member and more than 18,500 pounds of needed equipment, supplies, and fresh water.

"Houston and station, from Discovery, physical separation," an astronaut radioed at 3:26 p.m. EDT as powerful springs in the station's docking mechanism gently pushed the shuttle away as the two spacecraft sailed 220 miles above central Asia in orbital darkness.

Undocking came eight days, 19 hours and 32 minutes after commander Frederick "C.… Read more

A presidential panel assessing U.S. manned space flight presented five options to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Tuesday, ranging from NASA's current plan to build outposts on the moon to a "flexible path" approach to explore a variety of targets in the inner solar system.

But in its executive summary, the panel warned that without significant new funding and a long-term commitment to exploration, none of the options is viable.

"The Committee has found two executable options that comply with the FY 2010 budget," the panel wrote. "However, neither … Read more