Space

LE BOURGET, France -- Sure, there are electric vehicles on the road now. But aviation company AgustaWestland thinks they may have a place in the air, too.

At the Paris Air Show here, the Finmeccanica subsidiary showed off an exotic tiltrotor aircraft called Project Zero that's powered by lithium batteries. It flies, but project manager Jianye Zhang wouldn't say how far or how fast.

The single-passenger aircraft looks like a flying wing, but it's got two propellers built into the surface of the wing. For takeoff, the propellers push air downward to thrust the aircraft up like … Read more

Here on planet Earth we're used to flames -- whether from a candle or campfire -- reaching upward to the sky with slender limbs hungry for oxygen and driven by rising hot air. But in space, sans our planet's strong gravitational pull, flames are more likely to take the shape of eerie fireballs.

Within the flame of a regular candle wick, there's quite a bit going on. As the video below released this week by NASA explains, molecules from the wick are being cracked apart and vaporized by the flame, then combined with oxygen to produce light, heat, carbon dioxide, and water, as well as soot.

In recent years we've become quite familiar with how flames can extend and expand quickly in their greedy quest for more fuel and oxygen; witness countless western wildfires of the past decade. But researchers aboard the International Space Station have observed that flames in microgravity behave much differently, staying in a small spherical shape and letting oxygen molecules come to them.… Read more

Here's another accomplishment that NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover can add to its resume: the Mars-trotting robot will soon become an official Lego model.

Lego recently announced Curiosity's new gig after wrapping up its formal review process of creations that passed 10,000 votes on Lego's Kickstarter-esque Web site Cuusoo. Ironically, mechanical engineer Stephen Pakbaz, who worked on Curiosity for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, created the design for the 1:20 scale Lego version of the rover. … Read more

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield recently joked about getting a gold watch for his retirement. But this hunk of spacetime would be far more appropriate.

RJ-Romain Jerome's deluxe Moon Orbiter is a tribute to "the conquest of space," just in case you were confused about who's in charge of the cosmos (not Canadians, I can assure you).

Previewed at Baselworld 2013, the Orbiter is a massive, three-quarter-inch-thick chunk of steel that looks as though it will either fire missiles or jump off your wrist and transform into an angry robot. … Read more

Supermoons can tend to get doomsdayers revved up.

Besides being a remarkable sight to behold, the massive moon also comes with the mythical stigma of causing a handful of natural disasters, including earthquakes and tsunamis, floods, typhoons, and cyclones.

And, this year's supermoon is quickly upon us. It will be shining its light next weekend on June 23. On that day, the moon will appear bigger and brighter, and be closer to Earth than it's been all year -- a total of 221,824 miles away, which is roughly 30,000 miles closer than when it's at … Read more

Walks by the river can clear your head, open your eyes, and soothe your inner flow.

It's possible that you even espy unusual things along the banks -- peculiar voles, moles, or holes that conjure stories in your head.

Phil Green was wandering along the Merrimack River in Massachusetts when he discovered a piece of rock that didn't seem like it was from around his parts.

He told CBS Boston: "There she was just sitting there, sticking up like that, and I said heck what is this. It just didn't belong."

Yes, greenish rocks tend … Read more

The people of Gliese 526 are waiting for news of Earth.

They may or may not exist, and they may or may not want to invade our planet once they learn about us. But a project to crowdsource and send messages to them wants to try to make contact anyway.

Lone Signal is an effort to send a continuous stream of hellos to the folks at Gliese 526, a red dwarf star 17.6 light-years away in the constellation Bootes, aka Wolf 498. … Read more

MONTREAL -- Guitar-strumming astronaut Chris Hadfield is hanging up his spacesuit and quitting the astronaut biz, with plans to pursue "private interests." Does that mean a Leonard Nimoy-style album?

Heralded as the most popular spaceman since Neil Armstrong, the social-media phenom announced his retirement Monday at Canadian Space Agency headquarters outside Montreal, his first Canadian appearance since returning to Earth in May after five months on the ISS.

"I've decided to retire from government service after 35 years of serving our country," Hadfield, 53, told a press conference, adding that he's making good on a promise he made to his wife 30 years ago. … Read more

Last month, NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft suffered a potentially mission-ending malfunction, prompting the eyes of many astronomers and space geeks to grow a little misty. The crippling blow came just as data from Kepler had begun to identify more distant Earth-like planets within the habitable zone.

What's not as widely known, however, is that Kepler data isn't used just to hunt for planets that could potentially support life, it's also been tapped by some intrepid explorers to search for stellar and planetary megastructures created by far-flung advanced societies. Since we've yet to send anything into … Read more