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NASA and the European Space Agency say they have successfully tested an interplanetary communications protocol, with astronauts on the International Space Station using it to control a Lego robot in Germany.

The protocol is called Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN), and one of its creators is Vint Cerf, who helped come up with the original Internet Protocol suite. NASA and the ESA said on Thursday that DTN may one day allow "internet-like communications" with spaceships and help support infrastructure on other planets.

"The demonstration showed the feasibility of using a new communications infrastructure to send commands to a … Read more

While the Mars rover explores the Red Planet, a group of engineers submitted plans for a new out-of-this-world space mission: landing a boat on the Saturn moon Titan, which NASA, the European Space Agency, and Italian space agency ASI explored in depth over the last decade as part of the Cassini-Huygens mission.

Building on the successful 2005 landing of the Huygens probe on Titan, the new mission would aim to explore and collect data from the weird liquid methane makeup of the lakes found on the Saturn moon's surface. To explore these uncharted methane flows, engineers at the aerospace company Sener -- working in collaboration with Spain's Centro de Astrobiologia -- submitted a proposal last week to the European Planetary Science Congress for a Talise (Titan Lake In-situ Sampling Propelled Explorer) boat probe. … Read more

If only we were quantum states, we'd be playing Kirk and Scotty, popping around the universe until the inevitable failure in the transporter circuits.

European and Canadian scientists are pushing the envelope on quantum teleportation after having succeeded in beaming quantum states across some 90 miles in the Canary Islands.

The laser-locked telescopes on the islands of La Palma and Tenerife served as transporter rooms, teleporting information about the state of a pair of "entangled" particles.

The entanglement links the particles such that a change in one is registered in the other despite great distances between them. … Read more

The European Space Agency will launch a probe to Jupiter and its icy moons in the search of habitable zones and a better understanding of our outer solar system.

The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or JUICE, is scheduled to launch in 2022 and arrive at Jupiter eight years later to explore Jupiter and its moons for at least three years.

Jupiter's icy moons, Europa and Ganymede, are of great interest to space explorers because they are thought to have the conditions for life to form.

Ganymede, in particular, is an interesting subject to scientists because it is a water … Read more

Earlier today, scientists at the European Space Agency marked a milestone: On March 1, 2002, the largest Earth observation satellite ever built was launched into orbit. During the course of its (extended) lifetime, the Envisat satellite has circled the Earth more than 50,000 times, providing fodder to scientists publishing their research in an estimated 2,000 scientific journals.

But it's hardly an anomaly. Despite the well-chronicled budgetary problems affecting space programs around the world, space exploration nonetheless continues to extend our understanding of the solar system (and beyond). Just this week, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope took the … Read more

Ripples in the fabric of spacetime regularly zip across the universe from titanic cosmic events, such as the mergers of supermassive black holes millions to billions of times the mass of the sun.

These so-called gravitational waves ought to be ubiquitous but faint, and no experiment has yet registered the disturbance caused by a passing wave. The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna was supposed to do just that. The spaceborne observatory, also known as LISA, was to be a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) to detect gravitational waves and give scientists a whole new window through … Read more

NOORDWIJK, The Netherlands--I'm inside Columbus, one of the modules of the International Space Station, trying to decide whether I'm more interested in the glovebox that allows scientists to work on experiments in a vacuum or in the exercise bike.

Actually, I'm not really in space--I'm about an hour south of Amsterdam. But I am inside Columbus, at least a full-size mockup of it that's located here, inside ESTEC--the European Space Research and Technology Center--part of the European Space Agency (ESA).

I've come as part of Road Trip 2011, and as someone interested in the … Read more

Though playing video games is often called a child's activity, a new study from the Entertainment Software Association has found that that perception couldn't be further from the truth.

According to the organization, which represents the game industry, the average gamer today is 37 years old. Moreover, the average game buyer is 41 years old. Because of that, a greater number of parents are playing games with their children. The ESA said that 45 percent of parents play games with their kids "at least weekly."

Those statistics are quite important to the ESA and the industry … Read more

A whopping 72 percent of adults believe a law should remain in place to block the sale of "ultraviolent or sexually violent" video games, according to a poll commissioned by Common Sense Media.

The survey, which includes data from 2,100 adults interviewed last month, found that adults have a real problem with violent and sexually explicit titles. In fact, 65 percent of parents said that they're "concerned about the impact of ultraviolent video games on their kids." And 75 percent of parents said that they "would give the video game industry a negative … Read more