Aerospace

One can imagine that flying up to space can do peculiar things to one's body. And, in the case of a couple of astronauts who have returned, to one's mind.

Yet new research from NASA suggests that prolonged periods in the bluey-black beyond might cause serious damage to your eyes.

Space.com offers a chilling view of brain scan tests performed on 27 astronauts who had spent an average of 108 days away floating up there.

As they used to say in soothing TV commercials, I am not a doctor. However, the conclusion that a third of the … Read more

Someday the Phantom Eye will soar at 65,000 feet. For now, Boeing's excited just to see it go four-wheeling on the desert floor.

The hydrogen-powered unmanned aircraft earlier this month took a modest, ground-level spin at Edwards Air Force Base in its first medium-speed taxi test, Boeing said today. Nestled on its launch cart system, the Phantom Eye traveled some 4,000 feet at speeds of up to 30 knots in a trip that lasted less than two minutes. (In the air, it's expected to have a maximum speed of 200 knots.)

Additional taxi tests are yet … Read more

When your products cost tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, you probably want to give your customers the best possible buying experience.

Since the 1960s, airlines and others buying a brand-new Boeing airplane have picked up the 747, 757, 787 Dreamliner, and other models from the aviation giant's 60,000-square-foot Everett Delivery Center. But now, Boeing is building an all-new version of the facility (see video above), an 180,000-square-foot cathedral for picking up new airplanes that is expected to open some time next year.

When Boeing finishes building one of its well-known planes, it is towed to … Read more

A laptop stolen from NASA last year contained command codes used to control the International Space Station, an internal investigation has found.

The laptop, which was not encrypted, was among dozens of mobile devices lost or stolen in recent years that contained sensitive information, the space agency's inspector general told Congress today in testimony highlighting NASA's security challenges.

"The March 2011 theft of an unencrypted NASA notebook computer resulted in the loss of the algorithms used to command and control the International Space Station," NASA Inspector General Paul K. Martin said in written testimony (PDF). Another … Read more

Fans of the 747, rejoice! Boeing's flagship jumbo jet is one step closer to flying paying passengers.

Today at its huge Everett, Wash., assembly plant, the aviation giant handed over the very first 747-8 Intercontinental, the next generation of perhaps the most famous airplane in history.

At an event at the plant, about 45 minutes north of Seattle, Boeing delivered the first new 747, a special "VIP" version that will be modified to carry 100 passengers in what has to be assumed is very luxurious style, to "an undisclosed customer." This first plane will be … Read more

It was supposed to be a weapon of the future. Now the Airborne Laser is communing with the ghosts of aircraft past.

Earlier this month, the Airborne Laser, a seriously tricked-out Boeing 747-400 Freighter, arrived at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona, where it has been consigned to a sprawling and dusty final resting place known as the "Boneyard" (the Air Force's Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, under its formal name).

Officially on the books as the YAL-1A Airborne Laser Test Bed, the big aircraft with the bulbous nose was designed to shoot down ballistic missiles. The … Read more

In the search for planets, astronomers have traditionally hunted around stars. But a new study estimates that planets that don't orbit stars could be far more plentiful than previously thought.

The Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) at Stanford reported yesterday that new methods have dramatically raised the estimate of "nomad planets" in the Milky Way. There could be 100,000 more free-floating planets than stars in the galaxy.

Though they don't have the sun's energy to support life, some of these planets could have the conditions to support--and spread--microbial life through a … Read more

Astronomers have discovered solid soccer-ball shaped molecules called buckyballs in space for the first time, providing a glimpse of the structure of matter and perhaps life in the cosmos.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory yesterday announced that the Spitzer Space Telescope was able to detect the buckyballs around a pair of stars 6,500 light-years from Earth. Named after the geodesic domes of architect Buckminster Fuller, buckministerfullerenes, or buckyballs, are sphere-shaped molecules with 60 carbon atoms. The unusual cage-like structure has made them candidates for storing hydrogen fuel or medical treatments on Earth.

Until now, astronomers have only found buckyballs in a gas form in space. Data from the telescope showed the microscopic molecules, each thinner than a strand of hair, to be stacked on top each other in a volume equivalent to 10,000 Mount Everests. … Read more

Score one for old-school aircraft against the upstart drones.

Perhaps it's just a brief respite from the seemingly inevitable winds of change propelling unmanned aircraft ever higher in the Pentagon's airpower depth charts, but the venerable U-2 spy plane has won a key vote of confidence over the unmanned RQ-4 Global Hawk. That victory came not in a head-to-head aerial dogfight, but in a more bureaucratic conveyance: the draft of the federal budget for the U.S. government's fiscal 2013.

"The Administration proposes to end production of the Global Hawk unmanned aerial reconnaissance vehicle," says … Read more