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The outcome of dueling versions of the National Defense Authorization Act could determine how much the U.S. lines Russia's pockets before what some lawmakers hope is a speedy transition to a domestically produced rocket engine. The RD-180 engine is built by NPO Energomash, a manufacturer mostly owned by the Russian Federation. It's used in the Atlas V rocket, built by Lockheed Martin and Boeing's United Launch Alliance. The House version of the NDAA approves all of the 18 requested engines. In the Senate, where there has been a lengthy battle over buying from Russia, the NDAA authorizes nine engines. Either...

NASA on Saturday successfully expanded and pressurized an add-on room at the International Space Station two days after aborting the first attempt when it ran into problems.

India successfully launched a scale model of a reusable spacecraft on Monday, a project that in time could pit the nation against billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk in the race to make access to space cheaper and easier. The winged vessel -- one-fifth of full size -- blasted off on a rocket from Sriharikota base on the southeastern coast, the Indian Space Research Organisation said. The spacecraft reached an altitude of 65 kilometers (40 miles) and glided back at supersonic speeds for a splashdown in the Bay of Bengal. The test took about 13 minutes.

Explanation: On May 6, the after midnight launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lit up dark skies over Merritt Island, planet Earth. Its second stage bound for Earth orbit, the rocket's arc seems to be on course for the center of the Milky Way in this pleasing composite image looking toward the southeast. Two consecutive exposures made with camera fixed to a tripod were combined to follow rocket and home galaxy. A 3 minute long exposure at low sensitivity allowed the rocket's first stage burn to trace the bright orange arc and a 30 second exposure at high sensitivity...

Just three years after Elon Musk described his sci-fi-esque vision for “hyperloop” travel, one of two competing companies, Hyperloop One, successfully conducted its first proof-of-concept test in Nevada.

SpaceX personnel will recover Dragon by ship and then haul the spacecraft to Long Beach for processing. Dragon is the only robotic cargo vessel currently flying that's capable of bringing material safely from the ISS down to the ground. The other freighters — Orbital ATK's Cygnus spacecraft, Russia's Progress vessel and Japan's H-II Transfer Vehicle — are all designed to burn up in Earth's atmosphere and therefore are packed with garbage, not cargo, when they depart the orbiting lab.

The company said it is planning to send their Dragon spacecraft to the red planet as early as 2018 SpaceX is planning to be the first private company to land on Mars within the next two years. The company said it is planning to send its Dragon spaceraft to the red planet as early as 2018. Bosses announced their intentions in a statement on Twitter this afternoon. A spokesperson tweeted: "Planning to send Dragon to Mars as soon as 2018. Red Dragons will inform overall Mars architecture, details to come." Earlier this month the US aerospace company successfully landed a...

As it continues to defy common sense and the laws of economics with its lofty stock price, Tesla has again shown it has little corporate competence in the ability to deliver a consistently functional product that satisfies customers. The latest evidence comes in the recently rolled out Model X, which is allegedly an SUV, but looks like just another car. Retailing at a price only the extremely wealthy can afford ($138,000), the all-electric follow-up to the similarly troubled Model S automobile has stumbled out of the gate. The problems were outlined in a Consumer Reports article posted online Tuesday,...

Reducing 1.2 tonnes of CO₂ on the EU emissions trading system costs £5; but instead, the UK Government subsidises each car with £4,500. All of the world’s electric cars sold so far have soaked up £9 billion in subsidies, yet will only save 3.3 million tonnes of CO₂. This will reduce world temperatures by 0.00001°C in 2100 – the equivalent of postponing global warming by about 30 minutes at the end of the century. Electric cars will be a good idea, once they can compete – which will probably be by 2032. But it is daft to waste billions of...

Silicon Valley has little in common, politically, with either branch of the Republican Party, establishment or tea party. Executives at Apple, Google, and Facebook may run their companies with the ruthlessness of robber barons, but they also support Democrats such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and adhere to trendy environmental causes. But the two groups are united in one belief, that being that Donald Trump must be stopped. So, Republican movers and shakers from both the House and Senate as well as operatives such as Karl Rove met people like Apple’s Tim Cook and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon...

SpaceX aborted the launch of a commercial communications satellite less than a second before liftoff this evening (Feb. 28), delaying the mission yet again. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket was scheduled to launch the SES-9 satellite from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 6:46 p.m. EST (2346 GMT) today, but that initial liftoff time was pushed back 35 minutes because a boat wandered into the mission's "keep-out zone," launch controllers said. At 7:21 p.m. EST (0021 GMT on Monday, Feb. 29), the Falcon 9's engines began firing up, but they shut down just as the countdown clock was reaching...

Wall Street, media and government darling Tesla Motors has seen its stock price nearly halved from seven months ago. For so long it has seemed that ongoing bad news never had an effect on the heavily subsidized upstart, but now perhaps the Teflon is eroding off CEO Elon Musk. The precipitous, rapid descent preceded last week's horrid earnings report. USA Today helped smear lipstick on the pig, cheerily noting shares rose "14 percent at one point" after its earnings "miss" on Wednesday, because Musk delivered investors a "rosy outlook for the rest of 2016." This was in context of...

Elon Musk is a genius and a visionary who is almost single handedly changing the future of mankind through three different industries at once. With that said, it’s not clear if investors can easily benefit from any of that. Tesla, the company most associated with Musk is in a downward stock spiral over the last month which has taken it to new 52 week lows. There are many reasons for that downward spiral including concerns about market valuations and weak oil prices (which make Tesla’s correspondingly less attractive as a substitute versus conventional cars). But for the first time, Tesla...

Plunging oil prices are set to hit the electric car industry hard, but Tesla vehicles won't be the worst affected, says CEO Elon Musk. "[The] industry as a whole, I think, will definitely suffer from lower oil prices," Musk told CNN's Kristie Lu Stout on Monday. "It just makes economic sense."

Russia enters 'space race' to build moon base By Graeme Baker Last Updated: 5:57pm BST 31/08/2007 Russia has revived another Cold War rivalry by entering a new “space race” with America to build a permanent base on the Moon. The moon from Moscow's Novodevichy Monastery Anatoly Perminov, the head of the space agency Roskosmos, said Russia would organise a manned lunar mission by 2025 and would be ready to build an “inhabited station” between 2027 and 2032. From there, cosmonauts could strike out on a long-planned mission to Mars as early as 2035. “According to our estimates we will be...

Schaedler and colleagues at HRL invented a resin formulation that can be 3-D printed into parts of virtually any shape and size. The printed resin can then be fired, converting it into a high strength, fully dense ceramic. The resulting material can withstand ultrahigh temperatures in excess of 1,700 degrees Celsius (3,092 Fahrenheit) and is 10 times stronger than similar materials. Ceramics are much more difficult to work with than plastics or metals because they cannot be cast or machined easily, according to Schaedler, who is an author on the new study appearing today in the journal Science. But Schaedler's...

There are several space stories we’re anticipating for 2016 but one story might appear — to some — to belong in the realm of science fiction: sometime in the coming year Elon Musk will likely reveal his plans for colonizing Mars. Early in 2015, Musk hinted that he would be publicly disclosing his strategies for the Mars Colonial Transport system sometime in late 2015, but then later said the announcement would come in 2016.

Space X's Elon Musk predicts that the reusable rocket will reduce the cost of accessing space by at least hundredfold. SpaceX and Blue Origin, both have succeeded in landing rocket back on earth, but in different zones. On December 21, SpaceX has returned its 15-storey booster rocket upright and in intact form to a landing pad at a Cape Canaveral. It was big feat and one of the factors was a $60 million worth machinery was recovered. Blue Origin, a privately owned company created by Jeff Bezos, has launched and landed its own booster rocket for a suborbital flight. Indeed,...

With the production of 50 grams of plutonium-238, researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have restored a U.S. capability dormant for nearly 30 years and set the course to provide power for NASA and other missions. ... Researchers will analyze the sample for chemical purity and plutonium-238 content, then verify production efficiency models and determine whether adjustments need to be made before scaling up the process. ... There are currently only 35 kilograms, or about 77 pounds, of plutonium-238 set aside for NASA missions, and only about half of this supply meets power specifications. This is...

CARSON CITY — Independent auditors concluded Tesla Motors Inc. met all conditions for tax abatements and credits during the eight months after lawmakers approved the perks in a special 2014 legislative session. The audit by accounting firm Grant Thornton calculated Tesla has earned $9.6 million in transferable tax credits for the period Oct. 17, 2014, through June 30. Tesla, in partnership with Panasonic Corp., is building a $5 billion lithium battery factory east of Reno in the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center. To lure the electric carmaker led by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk to Nevada, state lawmakers last year approved $1.3...