NASA's Orion space program aims to renew lofty goals

When a rocket carrying a new crew vehicle lifts off at Cape Canaveral next year, it will be the first big step in a decades-long odyssey to see humans travel farther into space than ever before.

That ambitious program, called Orion, has goals that sound as if they were lifted from the pages of a sci-fi novel: the capture of near-Earth asteroids, bringing them into lunar orbit, a return to the moon, and putting astronauts on Mars.

Baby steps in the odyssey are already being taken in labs and testing facilities across the nation. One is at Aerojet in Rancho Cordova, Calif. There, inside solemn buildings surrounded by fields of dry grass, rockets destined for the dark reaches of space are being designed and tested.

Aerojet is supplying the large and small rockets that will allow the Orion multipurpose crew vehicle, designed to house four astronauts, to orient itself during space flight and during the re-entry to Earth's atmosphere, said Sam Wiley, head of human space at Aerojet.

The company is also supplying a launch-abort system, which would pull the crew module to safety in a life-threatening event during launch.

Countdown: The Coldest Places on Earth

Intro

Venturing outside in the cold this winter, with record-breaking low temperatures stretching from Maine to southern Florida, may take some courage, but these recent lows are nothing compared to the ones on this list.

Check out the places in the world that hold the records for the coldest temperatures ever measured on Earth.

8. International Falls, Minnesota, United States (- 40 Fahrenheit/- 40 Celsius)

International Falls is so serious about its status as one of the coldest places in the continental United States that it has actually taken another town to court over the title.

In 2002, International Falls took Fraser, Colorado, to court in order to finally settle who had claim to the title "Icebox of the Nation," according to a report from the BBC. They now celebrate that win by hosting the annual four-day Icebox Days festival, which includes events such as frozen turkey bowling, snow-sculpting and candlelit skiing.

While it is in fact only the second coldest place in the continental United States, International Falls boasts the lowest average temperature in the country, hovering between 32 and 36 degrees F (0 and 2 degrees C).

NASA’s TESS will search for habitable ‘super earths’

Now that astronomers have discovered planets around other stars, and judged that those planets could have Earth-like conditions, the next step is to find out for sure. While we can’t visit them, astronomers hope to gather clues via telescopes.

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a new space-based telescope that NASA expects to launch in 2017, will conduct an “all-sky survey,” scrutinizing stars throughout the sun’s neighborhood, to find any yet-undiscovered exoplanets that may orbit them. According to George Ricker, the TESS mission’s principal investigator, the TESS sky scan will cover 400 times as much sky as any previous mission.

The Kepler telescope revealed hundreds of potential exoplanets in its four years in orbit. Unfortunately, most of those planets are in star systems that are a thousand or more light-years away from Earth. Such vast distances will make it impossible for us to study them in any greater depth. The TESS mission, by contrast, will attempt to find more promising study subjects by focusing on stars closer to Earth. They might turn up in orbit around one or more of the many red-dwarf stars and seven sun-like stars that astronomers have all calculated to be within 20 light-years of Earth.

NASA Awards $125,000 Grant for 3D Printed Food on Long-Term Space Travels

Items on the menu include cricket pizza

Imagine exchanging recipes in the form of a piece of software instead of typed instructions on a website, and eating pizza with crickets on it instead of pepperoni.

This could be the future of long-term space travel, and even everyday life.

Anjan Contractor, who own Systems & Materials Research Corporation, has created a universal food synthesizer that uses a 3D printer to make food -- and he just received a six-month, $125,000 grant from NASA to create a prototype.

His prototype 3D food printer is based on a piece of open-source hardware called the second-generation RepRap 3D printer.  

The universal food synthesizer would read recipes in software form, where instructions on how to make certain foods would be embedded. This software tells the 3D printer which powders to mix with which liquids.

The software will also be entirely open-source, so that others can look at the code and create recipes. 

After the 3D printer "reads" the recipe, it uses a combination of powdered and certain liquid ingredients to make food layer-by-layer -- just like other 3D printed materials. Powdered forms of ingredients are used because they last longer.

A Dream of Trees Aglow at Night

Antony Evans, left, and Kyle Taylor show E. coli with jellyfish genes.

Hoping to give new meaning to the term “natural light,” a small group of biotechnology hobbyists and entrepreneurs has started a project to develop plants that glow, potentially leading the way for trees that can replace electric streetlamps and potted flowers luminous enough to read by.

The project, which will use a sophisticated form of genetic engineering called synthetic biology, is attracting attention not only for its audacious goal, but for how it is being carried out.

Rather than being the work of a corporation or an academic laboratory, it will be done by a small group of hobbyist scientists in one of the growing number of communal laboratories springing up around the nation as biotechnology becomes cheap enough to give rise to a do-it-yourself movement.

The project is also being financed in a D.I.Y. sort of way: It has attracted more than $250,000 in pledges from about 4,500 donors in about two weeks on the Web site Kickstarter.

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo Makes History with 1st Rocket-Powered Flight

Virgin Galactic tweeted a photo of the historic test flight on April 

29, 2013. They wrote: "Photo: SpaceShipTwo fires her rocket motor

in flight for 1st time. 

Credit: http://MarsScientific.com pic.twitter.com/bNcOMTE9oA"

A private spaceship designed to carry space tourists made its first rocket-powered test flight today (April 29), reaching supersonic speeds as it paved the way toward commercial flights in the near future.

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo space plane fired its rocket engines for the first time during flight this morning in a test from California's Mojave Air and Spaceport. The vehicle was carried aloft by the mothership WhiteKnightTwo, and then released in midair at an altitude of about 46,000 feet (14,000 meters). At that point, SpaceShipTwo test fired its rocket engine, designed to propel the craft of the rest of the way up to space.

After a short 16-second burn today, SpaceShipTwo reached a maximum altitude of 56,000 feet (17,000 meters) before flew back to Earth. The trip marked the 26th test flight of the vehicle, and the first "powered flight," which propelled the ship to Mach 1.2, fast enough to beat the speed of sound, which is 761 miles per hour (1224 km/h). 

Latest interesting inventions 2013 (Part 2)

6. TrakDot Luggage

No more lost bags! Slip this gadget into your luggage and stay informed about its location via text message, email or an app. Get notified when your suitcase arrives in your destination city, for example, or program TrakDot to alert you when it’s on the baggage carousel. Available in April. $49.95, plus $8.99 to activate and a $12.99 annual service fee; TrakDot.com

7. CordCruncher

Untangling earbuds after they’ve been stuffed in a purse, gym bag or pocket can be a pain. CordCruncher prevents knots by keeping the cord straight within an elastic sleeve. Pull the earbuds out from one side when you’re ready to use them, and then drag the sleeve back over the cord for easy storage. $25; CordCruncher.com

Latest interesting inventions 2013 (Part 1)

Sometimes all it takes is a smart product to save your sanity. We rounded up some of our favorite new developments that are either out now or hitting shelves in the next few months. From high-tech devices to simple, wish-we’d-thought-of-that tools, these low-cost innovations (most under $50!) can help you feel healthier, safer or more prepared—all the while easing everyday life.

1. Parrot Flower Power

Soon you won’t need a green thumb to keep houseplants happy. Just insert this battery-operated sensor into indoor soil to track light, humidity and temperature. Choose the type of potted plant you want to monitor from a library of 6,000 species via an app, and you’ll be alerted when it needs more water, sun or fertilizer. Available later this year. Price to be determined; Parrot.com

2. Revlon File ’N Peel 6-in-1

Ditch those worn-out nail files at the bottom of your purse! The File ’N Peel features layers you can lift and discard when they get dull to reveal fresh surfaces underneath. Three shaping layers and three smoothing layers keep nails pretty; one clever product keeps clutter at bay. And the layers last up to three months, assuming one to two uses per week. Translation: A single File ’N Peel can outlast a regular file three times over. $4.49; Revlon.com

3 new planets could host life

 STORY HIGHLIGHTS

1. Scientists discovered 3 planets in the "habitable zone" of their host stars
2. Kepler-69c seems less clearly in the habitable zone than the other two planets
3. They are all more than 1,000 light-years away
4. The Kepler satellite is looking at more than 150,000 stars for possible planets orbiting them

In the midst of chaos here on Earth, scientists are finding hope for life on other planets.

Scientists announced Thursday the discovery of three planets that are some of the best candidates so far for habitable worlds outside our own solar system -- and they're very far away.

NASA's Kepler satellite, which is keeping an eye on more than 150,000 stars in hopes of identifying Earth-like planets, found the trio.

First exoplanet smaller than Mercury discovered

Seismic waves on a star have helped astronomers pin down the smallest known exoplanet. The newly announced world, called Kepler-37b, is not much larger than Earth's moon, and becomes the first known planet orbiting a sunlike star that is smaller than any in our solar system.

Kepler-37b is one of three new worlds found around Kepler 37, a star slightly cooler than our sun near the constellation Cygnus. Another planet is smaller than Earth, while the third is twice Earth's size. All three are probably rocky and extremely hot, with no atmosphere or chance of supporting life.

"This shows us the diversity of exoplanetary systems," says Thomas Barclay at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. "We knew there were very large systems – now we know there are very small ones as well."

The three planets were found with NASA's Kepler space telescope, which searches for dips in starlight when a planet passes in front of its star, as seen from Earth. The greater the dip, the larger the planet.

Kepler-37b beats out the previous smallest world, Kepler-42d, which was discovered last year and is about half as big as Earth. But two challengers could rewrite the record books yet again. An evaporating exoplanet announced last week is thought to be the size of the moon, while one of the first known exoplanets, found orbiting a dead star called a pulsar, has a mass only 2 per cent that of Earth.