NASA finds a mineral on Mars that could rewrite its entire history

There’s a bit of a mystery unfolding on Mars. Late last year, Curiosity drilled into the surface of the Red Planet and unearthed something unexpected, a mineral called tridymite. An analysis of this find has just been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explaining that the presence of tridymite could completely…

The New NASA X-Plane Will Be Fully Electric

Last year, NASA casually announced its intention to disrupt the aviation industry by sticking fully electric commercial passenger planes in the sky in 20 years. In a small step toward that goal, space agency director Charles Bolden has just announced plans for the X-57, the first all-electric addition to the famous X-plane series. The single-seater…

How To Code Like The Top Programmers At NASA — 10 Critical Rules

Short : Do you know how top programmers write mission-critical code at NASA? To make such code clearer, safer, and easier to understand, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has laid 10 rules for developing software. The developers at NASA have one of the most challenging jobs in the programming world. They write code and develop mission-critical…

Is this the year Elon Musk’s SpaceX fortunes will lift off?

By most measures, SpaceX has enjoyed a banner 2016. In the first half of this year, the company took critical steps toward proving it can reliably retrieve and reuse its first-stage rocket boosters, successfully landing rockets on a floating drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean three separate times. It broke a monopoly one of its…

What was Elon Musk doing at the Pentagon?

Washington (CNN) – Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, met with Secretary of Defense Ash Carter Wednesday as the Pentagon looks to raise its technology game. The focus of the closed-door get together was “innovation,” according to a Defense Department spokesman, although Musk is also looking to win more government business for SpaceX,…