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Echo II: When satellites were young and shiny (photo)

Back at the start of the Space Age, satellites weren't always the high-tech wonders that they are today.

Behold the 135-foot Echo II, NASA's "rigidized balloon," which served as a passive communications satellite. Here, it's seen undergoing a tensile stress test in a dirigible hanger at Weekesville, N.C. Microwave signals sent from Earth bounced off the orbiting metallic balloon to another point back on Earth.

NASA sent Echo II into orbit on January 25, 1964, and it was in service until June 1969, when it re-entered the atmosphere and burned up. Its predecessor, the slightly smaller Echo 1A, more

NASA's latest stunning images of sun (photos)

Its mission is science, but since NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) was launched in 2010, it's been sending some just-plain stunning images of the sun back to Earth. The SDO spacecraft is the first mission launched for NASA's Living With a Star (LWS) Program, designed to understand the sun's influence on Earth.

Using Atmospheric Imaging Assembly, EUV Variability Experiment, and a Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager, the semi-autonomous spacecraft gives scientists a nearly constant ability to watch our star.

Check out some of the latest colorful multiwavelength images returned this week from the orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory. more

A high-res Earth from 512 miles (photos)

The Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite, or VIIRS, onboard NASA's newest Earth-observing satellite acquired its first image this week, a stunning view of Eastern North America from Canada's Hudson Bay past Florida to the northern coast of Venezuela.

The low-Earth orbit satellite known as NPP carries five instruments as it travels at 16,640mph at an altitude of 512 miles. It was launched October 29 from Vandenberg Air Force base in California on a mission to observe Earth's environment and climate.

NASA says the tools aboard the NPP will be used in monitoring that planet's environment, more

Yes, Leia, there is a Yoda Santa--made of Legos (photos)

SAN FRANCISCO--Brick by brick, visitors to San Francisco's Union Square are taking part in a fantastically geeky holiday treat: helping to build a 12-foot-tall, 10-foot-wide Santa Yoda.

The event, which takes place this weekend, is part of a Lucasfilm and Lego promotion for the launch of www.legosantayoda.com, a Web site that will soon let you send Star Wars-themed holiday greeting cards. For each virtual greeting shared, Lego will donate one new Lego toy to the United States Marine Corps' Toys for Tots program, up to 1 million toys.

The public is invited to come out and help more

A flying telescope? Observing NASA's SOFIA airborne observatory

NASA this past weekend offered up tours of its recently souped up airborne telescope, built inside a modified Boeing 747 aircraft. The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, is the world's largest airborne observatory.

SOFIA carries a telescope with a 100-inch reflecting mirror that conducts astronomy research not possible with ground-based telescopes, NASA said. It's normally housed at NASA's Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, Calif., but CNET got to see it Friday at a press event at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.

Ames Research Center Director Pete Worden said SOFIA is more

Rethinking products and processes at the Green Biz Innovation Forum (photos)

The dawn of a new era in efficient flight (audio slideshow)

SANTA ROSA, Calif.--On-demand aviation, the idea that mobility one day can be just as personal and convenient in the air as it is on the ground, is a lofty goal. And it's what competitors at NASA's Green Flight Challenge going on here this week are trying to attain.

Aerospace Engineer Mark Moore said the challenge, which is one of NASA's Centennial Challenges and sponsored by Google, is about finding ways to use the layers of uncluttered 3D space above us to get around--and how to do it in an energy-efficient manner.

Commercial planes currently average about more

Feeding the meter for public space (audio slideshow)

As part of an urban-design movement that began in San Francisco in 2005, parking spaces around the world were reclaimed as public spaces yesterday, with artists and activists feeding meters to build temporary community spaces and small parks for Park(ing) Day.

Across San Francisco, pop-up communities of restaurants, hair dressers, yoga classes, and gardens created new forms of temporary public space, re-envisioning the metered parking space as a public gathering space--a place for meeting people, cultural expression, teaching, playing, or just hanging out.

Simultaneous sunset and moonset seen from ISS (photo)

For astronaut Ron Garan and the rest of the crew of the International Space Station, this extraordinary view of a simultaneous sunset and moonset is a daily occurrence (this one was captured on July 31). The station orbits Earth every 90 minutes, so the crew gets treated to this scene about 16 times a day.