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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--NASA's $2.4 billion Mars Science Laboratory has completed an exhaustive series of functional tests to verify the car-size rover's readiness for launch in November on an eight-and-a-half-month voyage to the Red Planet and a dramatic rocket-powered "sky crane" descent to the surface, officials said today.

Engineers now plan to carefully fold up the rover's robot arm, camera mast, wheels, and suspension so it can be packed inside a protective aeroshell that, in turn, will be attached to the bottom of a rocket-powered descent stage. The entire spacecraft then will be … Read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--A powerful United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket roared to life today and launched NASA's solar-powered Juno space probe on a five-year voyage to Jupiter, the first step in a $1.1 billion mission to look for clues about the origins of the solar system in the hidden heart of its largest planet.

"What we're really going after are some of the most fundamental questions of our solar system--how Jupiter formed, how it evolved, what really happened early in the solar system that eventually led to all of us and the terrestrial planets," said Scott Bolton, the principal investigator. "These are really basic questions: who are we, where did we come from, how did we get here?

"We're kind of going after this recipe of how planets are made. We're getting the ingredients of Jupiter, we're going to understand what the structure is like inside, how was it built, and that will give us guidance as to what happened in that early time that eventually led to us."

The towering 197-foot-tall Atlas 5, equipped with five solid-fuel strap-on boosters for extra power, ignited with a ground-shaking roar at 12:25 p.m. EDT, generating 2.5 million pounds of thrust and instantly pushing the spacecraft away from launch complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. It was only the second launch of a five strap-on Atlas 5, the most powerful version offered by United Launch Alliance.

Liftoff was delayed 51 minutes to resolve two technical issues and to make sure a boat that strayed into the launch danger zone cleared the area.

Climbing away atop a brilliant plume of fiery exhaust, the rocket accelerated through the sound barrier 34 seconds after liftoff, arcing away to the east and putting on a spectacular lunchtime show for tourists and area residents. The strap-on boosters burned out and peeled off about a minute later and the first stage shut down and fell away as planned four and a half minutes after launch.

The rocket's hydrogen-fueled Centaur upper stage then carried out a six-minute burn to boost the spacecraft into a temporary parking orbit. A second nine-minute Centaur firing 31 minutes later accelerated Juno to 25,000 mph, or 7 miles per second--interplanetary escape velocity--and three minutes later, the 4-ton spacecraft separated from the Centaur to fly on its own.… Read more

Boeing will use United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rockets for initial test flights of the company's proposed CST-100 manned spacecraft, a seven-seat capsule being developed for commercial missions to and from government and private-sector space stations in low-Earth orbit, company officials announced today.

John Elbon, vice president and program manager of Boeing commercial crew transportation systems, said four test flights of the CST-100 spacecraft are envisioned, assuming continued NASA funding, including an on-the-launch-pad abort test in 2014 that will not require a booster.

The other three flights will use a version of the Atlas 5 that includes one solid-fuel … Read more

If you happen to be in South London this September attending the green motor festival EcoVelocity, check out Europe's fastest car, the Bluebird Electric.

Bluebird Electric is piloted by will Don Wales, the grandson of legendary racing motorist Sir Malcolm Campbell. Wales currently holds the U.K. land speed record for electric vehicles at 137mph, when he piloted the Bluebird Electric in August 2000.

Sometime before 2013, Wales will attempt to break 500 mph, he said in a press release.

"One day we're going to run out of today's fuels, and electric is the future," … Read more

A Virginia Tech University engineering team on Thursday won first place in the EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge with an 82-mile-per-gallon, extended-range electric vehicle (EREV) using E85 (ethanol).

The results of the three-year EcoCAR competition were announced on L'Enfant Plaza, in Washington, D.C. United States Secretary of Energy Steven Chu congratulated the team at an award ceremony. A total of 16 teams participated in the competition that was co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors (GM).

A student team from Ohio State University took second place with an E85 EREV. Third place went to a … Read more

Though Rustock remains down for the count, according to Microsoft, the hunt goes on for the creators of the infamous botnet.

Rustock was taken down this past March by Microsoft and law enforcement officials who used a combination of legal maneuvers and raids to seize control of the servers that ran the notorious spamming network. Since then, Rustock has remained "dead and decaying," said Richard Boscovich, senior attorney for Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit, in a blog published yesterday.

But taking down the network itself is only half the battle in keeping botnets like Rustock offline. Tracking down the … Read more

Tesla Motors and Electric Power Research Institute join U.S. Department of Energy, automaker research teams and energy companies to accelerate the development of new energy-efficient technologies for cars and light trucks and the infrastructure needed to support them.

According to the DOE, the collaborative effort formerly known as FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership, is now U.S. DRIVE--Driving Research and Innovation for Vehicle efficiency and Energy sustainability. The goal is to beef up research and development of not only new vehicle technologies, but to also work on a broad range of energy infrastructure technologies.

"Government-industry partnerships like U.… Read more

Having lived in both Europe and the U.S., I'm often amused by what the different sides of the Atlantic find unamusing.

So I found myself quizzically smirking when I heard that U.S.-based Twitter had allegedly reprimanded Rio Ferdinand, England's (and Manchester United's) often-injured soccer star, for tweeting in a cyberbullying manner.

Here's the funny part. Well, one of them.

The person Ferdinand was allegedly accused of bullying was Larry King's replacement on CNN, Piers Morgan. This is akin to being accused of cyberbullying someone from 4Chan.

It seems the row started in … Read more

A rare rift has developed between national governments and the nonprofit organization that oversees Internet domain names, with neither side showing signs of backing down in a dispute that includes trademarks and free expression.

In a statement released over the weekend, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, listed 23 areas of continued disagreement over the rules for approving new top-level domain names. Hundreds of applications for these suffixes are expected later this year, including .car, .love, .movie, .web, and .gay.

ICANN chairman Peter Thrush wrote (PDF) that his organization "has made a good faith effort … Read more