mars

Shortly after a large meteor hit Russia in February, injuring about 1,000 people, President Obama's administration announced that the U.S. would work on asteroid tracking technology to avoid potentially more severe Earth collisions. On Monday, top NASA administrator Charles Bolden reiterated this pledge.

Bolden spoke at the Human to Mars Summit in Washington, D.C. on Monday and said that a robotic spacecraft mission currently being planned will "prepare efforts to prevent an asteroid from colliding with devastating force into our planet,"according to U.S. News & World Report.

The government's plan is … Read more

For its trip to Mars, NASA wants haikus like this, Why? Because it's cool.

That's pretty much the gist of this whole story, actually. Maybe I should start composing all stories in the form of a haiku to save us all time.

It's no joke, though, that NASA really is collecting submissions of three-line poems from the public to send into space aboard the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, which will launch later this year for a mission to study the Red Planet's atmosphere.… Read more

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Nathan Fielder asks: What happens if you text your parents that you're a drug dealer?

- Some New York City subway stations just got free Wi-Fi and cell service.

- Crew team finds unexpected floating head in Hudson River.

- Michael Bay is why Transformers toys got so complicated over the years.

- Mars Rover penis graffiti goes viral.… Read more

For the first time since its descent onto the red planet, the Mars rover Curiosity is getting a little alone time.

The rover and NASA scientists are having a communication breakdown, of sorts. But, not to worry, no hurt feelings are involved. The issue is that the sun has got in the way.

Once every 26 months, as the Earth and Mars rotate around the sun, the two planets end up on opposite sides of the star in an event called the Mars solar conjunction. Because of the sun's massive size, any communication sent between the two planets can … Read more

A stunning 4-gigapixel panorama of Mars, compiled from images captured by two mast cameras aboard NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, could be one of the most detailed views of our distant neighbor yet.

The panoramic picture of Gale Crater derives from 295 images that were digitally stitched together by Estonian photographer Andrew Bodrov. In its final form, the mosaic stretches out to an astounding 90,000 by 45,000-pixel resolution. … Read more

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Backyard tinkerer Grant Thompson teaches us how to build a solar-powered death ray. A man gets a Netflix tattoo for life and only gets a measly one-year subscription for it. Plus, we meet Mr. Stubbs the alligator, the first reptile (that we know of, at least) to receive a prosthetic tail. Donation came from the Phoenix Herpetological Society and the Core Institute. … Read more

A "Veronica Mars" movie is nearly a reality, thanks to the Kickstarter campaign's rabid fans.

The TV show's creator, Rob Thomas, with the blessing of Warner Bros., opened a crowdsourcing campaign today and asked for $2 million dollars to shoot a "Veronica Mars" movie. Four-and-a-half hours later, the project hit the $1 million mark, and now it's a few hundred thousand shy of its goal.

It's the fastest-growing film campaign on the crowdsourcing site, and this is the first time a major movie studio has been connected to a Kickstarter project like this. Warner Bros., a studio that normally makes big budget films costing tens of millions of dollars, wasn't going to foot the bill for a lower budget film like "Veronica Mars," based on a canceled TV series focused on a high school girl who is also a private investigator. So, Thomas suggested Kickstarter and Warner Bros. gave him the green light. If the fans would help pay for production, the studio would take care of the costs associated with distributing the movie. … Read more