A Japanese astronaut is set to perform a number of worthless experiments this month while aboard the International Space Station in an attempt to piss off taxpayers and win over schoolchildren. Koichi Wakata will perform 16 tasks chosen from 1,597 suggested by hundreds of people, from nursery school...

NASA are looking at sending robots to build landing pads for rockets arriving at their 2020 Moonbase.  Possibly because someone said "I dare you to make having a goddamn moonbase even cooler!" The project isn't just an awesome opening cinematic, though - the realities of living on the...

Space is hard on equipment. Very hard. Take temperatures: On the surface of Mars, they can range from a summer's balmy 81 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius) to –225 degrees F (–143 degrees C). For a point of comparison, the coldest naturally occurring  temperature ever recorded...

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) believe they've solved the age-old problem of how to shit in space. The current ISS toilet is a Russian-built, western-style commode that sucks waste away like a vacuum cleaner. Use of that toilet requires practice before heading to space, particularly b...

The crew of the doomed space shuttle Columbia tried to regain control of the stricken craft in the moments before it broke up during re-entry but lost consciousness "within seconds" due to rapid depressurisation in the cockpit, according to a second Nasa report into the disaster, which claimed the l...

When Apollo 8 launched for the moon in 1968, the heavens were primarily the domain of the two superpowers. Today space has been opened to myriad nations by vast technological advances and increased international cooperation. A telling example of the new celestial order came two months ago when India...

It could be the ultimate Christmas present for anyone who can afford the stellar price tag: Nasa has announced plans to sell off its space shuttles when they stop flying in 2010, at a cost of at least $42m (£27m) apiece – postage and packing included. Selling its remaining shuttles would bring in...

Justifiable Herbicide?In “No-Till: The Quiet Revolution,” David R. Huggins and John P. Reganold argue for no-till farming as a more sustainable alternative to plow-based agriculture and describe how herbicide use has enabled growers to effectively practice no-till on a commercial scale. ...

NASA has commissioned a special outfit costing over two hundred million dollars.  It's intended to appear on that most exclusive of catwalks, which you may know as "the moon", which has only featured one outfit in the last fifty years.  Which frankly kicks the hell out of anythin...

So scientists have discovered what they're dubbing "super-Earths" circling a star 42-light years away. That's an artist's depiction of what they might look like if they were identical in appearance to earth and weren't actually pink with purple polka-dots like I know they are. Three have been identi...