space

On Monday, according to a Reuters story, NASA launched some trash into space. No, don't read that sentence again.

The trouble, the story says, was that there isn't enough room on the space shuttle to bring back a 1,400-pound machine containing ammonia and a piece of obsolete video equipment weighing 212 pounds. Although flinging the waste into the galaxy was not exactly NASA's first choice, the organization felt it had no other option.

So International Space Station flight engineer Clay Anderson launched the items from the space station, with radars attached to the rubble to monitor … Read more

On Tuesday, MySpace will take another step in its gradual global expansion by fully launching the MySpace Mexico portal. The site has been in beta since January; MySpace has highlighted its success with ComScore statistics that put MySpace Mexico's total unique active visitors. at approximately 1.5 million per month.

MySpace, which gained much of its early buzz in the U.S. by catering to the independent music community, has aimed for a similar strategy in Mexico--in May, it sponsored the Vive Latino festival in Mexico City. To commemorate the launch of MySpace Mexico, the News Corp.-owned social … Read more

Inflation has officially hit commercial spaceflight.

When technology industry veteran Greg Olsen traveled to the International Space Station aboard the Russian Soyuz rocket in October 2005, his trip cost about $20 million. But the price of the same spaceflight, which is arranged by Virginia-based Space Adventures, will cost between $30 million and $40 million in the coming two years, according to an AP article.

The rising price is "mostly because of the fallen dollar," Space Adventures CEO Eric Anderson told the AP.

The dollar is worth about 25.5 Russian rubles, down from 32 rubles in 2002.

Space … Read more

Vienna, VA.-based Space Adventures said Wednesday that it's booked two added passenger seats for orbital flights on the Russian Soyuz rocket in the coming years, upping its commitment in the tourist spaceflight market. The company, which was the first to send a private citizen into space on the Soyuz, said that because of consumer demand, it has reserved two commercial seats on flights in fall 2008 and spring 2009, under contract with the Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation. And Space Adventures is negotiating terms for flights in 2010 and beyond. (Previously, it has sent one tourist … Read more

If Spider-Man were to head into outer space, he'd probably want a BioSuit.

The prototype space suit is under development at MIT, under the direction of Dava Newman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems. It's a long-term project--the unitardlike outfit has been under development for seven years, and Newman figures the BioSuit crew has another decade to go, as NASA inches forward with its plans to send people to Mars.

Traditional orbital outerwear, like the Extravehicular Mobility Unit worn by astronauts when they venture outside the space station, gets its bulk in part from gas … Read more

HeySpread is a new service from the folks at Particles (creators of HeyWatch and HeyCast) that lets users upload a single video to multiple video-hosting providers. Just pick the video you want to upload from your hard drive, and HeySpread will pull up a listing of various video hosts. All you need is log-in information for each of them, and the file will automatically get sent out to each, assuming you've got the correct credentials.

HeySpread works with YouTube, Google, and MySpace Video, along with DailyMotion, Blip.TV, and four others. In my testing with five of the nine … Read more

During a recent mission, Power Downloader was working on some top-secret documents that he could only entrust to his superhero-grade hard drive. The only problem was, when Power went through the usual steps for saving and storing secret documents, he found that his most secure hard drive was almost totally full. He quickly realized he had no choice but to find a way to make room on his hard drive.… Read more

Up until this weekend I hadn't really been too excited about seeing the upcoming Simpsons feature-length movie. That was until I laid my eyes on the film's Web site.

Like most other movie marketing sites out there, it's full of a lot of Flash with bouncy navigation and a nearly unbearable amount of sound effects. There are the usual mini-games (both of which I might add are quite enjoyable), and links to the movie's MySpace profile (it is Fox, after all). The real gem however, is the Simpsons avatar builder--a piece-by-piece character maker that lets people … Read more

At some point within the last week, some MySpace user pages were seeded with malicious computer code. The malicious code seeks to exploit Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer using recently patched security holes. The hope is that you haven't patched your computer yet. If you're a MySpace visitor and you visit one of the infected pages, you'll be redirected to a fake MySpace log-in page aiming to steal the visitor's MySpace user name and password. The attack employs phishing and drive-by download techniques.

SANS' Internet Storm Center offers a detailed breakdown of the attack.