USS Zumwalt laid up for repairs before commissioning

The US Navy's largest-ever destroyer has taken a bit of a pause in its journey to its new homeport. The Commander, Naval Surface Forces, US Pacific issued a statement today that the future USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000) suffered an "engineering casualty" shortly after leaving Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia. No one was reported injured and the guided-missile destroyer suffered only minor damage, but was forced to return to Norfolk for assessment and repair.

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Meet the US Air Force's new long-range strategic bomber – the B-21 Raider

At the Air Force Association's Air, Space, and Cyber Conference at National Harbor, Maryland, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James has christened the US Air Force's next generation Long-Range Strike Bomber (LRSB) the "B-21 Raider." Formally designated the B-21 earlier this year to reflect the aircraft's status as the first bomber of the 21st century, the addition of "Raider" refers to the famous Doolittle Raiders of World War II and was selected from 2,100 unique submissions.

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Next-gen surgical dressing designed to stop the clock for battlefield wounds

If not treated quickly and properly, battlefield wounds can soon become a menace to life and limb. Unfortunately, it isn't always possible to evacuate a wounded soldier immediately to a medical facility, so the US Office of Naval Research (ONR) is sponsoring development of a new field dressing called Acute Care Cover for the Severely Injured Limb (ACCSIL), which not only covers wounded limbs, but reduces damage and protects exposed tissues for up to 72 hours.

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US Army developing first new hand grenade in 40 years

The US military is getting its first new hand grenade in 40 years as engineers at the US ArmyArmament Research, Development, and Engineering Center (ARDEC) at Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey, work on a safer multi-purpose design. Called the Enhanced Tactical Multi-Purpose (ET-MP) hand grenade, it will allow soldiers to choose between concussive or fragmentation blasts with the flip of a lever.

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DARPA wants eyes in the sky to track drones in cities

With quadcopters and other commercial drones becoming cheaper, more sophisticated, and numerous, the US military recognizes the potential security threat these tiny aircraft pose. In order to stay abreast of what drones are where, particularly in urban environments, DARPA has begun the Aerial Dragnet project to develop a system for detecting and tracking small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) at low altitude.

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Asteroid mining: The race for space riches

There's gold in them thar asteroids – also iron, nickel, copper, and, most valuable of all, water. According to the proponents of asteroid mining, these space rocks are a virtual El Dorado in the sky with more obtainable minerals in the largest three than on the entire Earth. The question is, where exactly is all this wealth and how do you get it without going broke in the process?

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Boeing and Saab roll out T-X fifth-generation jet fighter trainer

Finally sating the curiosity in aviation circles, Boeing and partner Saab have taken the wraps off their long-teased T-X military jet training aircraft in St. Louis. The single-engine, two-seater aircraft is the focus of a major competition worth billions of dollars to replace the US Air Force's aging fleet of T-38 trainers with a modern design for future pilots of fifth-generation fighters.

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Jeff Bezos unveils towering New Glenn reusable rocket

The Blue Origin rocket family got a bit larger today as founder and CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled the company's New Glenn heavy booster. Named after Colonel John Glenn, the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth in 1962, the New Glenn is a reusable, vertical-landing, heavy-lift version of the New Shepard rocket and will carry both astronauts and orbital payloads.

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NASA backs X-plane development of twin-hull Aurora D8 airliner

In February, NASA announced that it wanted to use its New Aviation Horizons program to revive the famed X-plane that did so much to advance post-war aviation. Now the agency has awarded a six-month US$2.9 million contract to Manassas, Virginia-based Aurora Flight Sciences to develop a scaled demonstration version of its Aurora D8 subsonic commercial airliner. Described as "changing the paradigm," the D8 is designed to significantly improve airliner performance by 2027.

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Future Living

Future Living is up.

Spitzer space telescope beams down "Enterprise" nebulae

To mark the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, NASA today released images of a seemingly heavenly tribute to the television series that first aired on September 8, 1966. The infrared images of a pair of nebulae returned by the space agency's Spitzer Space Telescope bear a resemblance to two versions of the starship USS Enterprise, which featured prominently in the show.

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USS Zumwalt starts stealthy voyage to San Diego home port

The US Navy has revealed that its largest-ever destroyer, and most technologically-advanced surface ship to date, left the Bath Iron Works in Maine, US, on Wednesday and is preparing for its three-month journey to its home port in San Diego. The USS Zumwalt(DDG 1000) has completed its sea trials and will join the fleet after its commissioning ceremony in Baltimore on October 15.

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OSIRIS-REx on its way to asteroid rendezvous

NASA's OSIRIS-REx asteroid sampling mission is on its way. At 7:05 pm EDT, the unmanned probe lifted off atop an Atlas/Centaur booster from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. According to NASA, the liftoff and orbital burns went off without a hitch and the spacecraft is functioning as expected.

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Star Trek: 50 years of boldly going

On September 8, 1966 at 8:30 pm ET, a new series premiered on the NBC television network. Neither the network nor the studio had any confidence in it and Variety panned it as "an incredible and dreary mess of confusion and complexities." Never a ratings hit, it barely ran three seasons before cancellation, yet this unsuccessful show called Star Trekwent on to become a cultural phenomenon whose influence continues to reverberate half a century later, not only in entertainment, but in its impact on science and technology. New Atlas looks at the tech of the original Star Trek and why it still inspires scientists and engineers.

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Virgin Galactic airborne after two year hiatus

Virgin Galactic returned to flight status today as SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity took to the skies over Mojave, California. Though a full crew was in the cockpit, this was a captive-carry test flight, where the passenger-carrying spacecraft remained firmly attached to the WhiteKnightTwo mothership, VMS Eve. According to Virgin Galactic, the paired planes reached an altitude of over 50,000 ft during the 3 hour and 43 minute test flight.

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Cassini reveals Titan's dunes and Xanadu annex mountains

NASA's Cassini Saturn orbiter may be nearing the end of its 20-year mission, but it's still sending back a few surprises. On July 25, the unmanned probe passed within 607 mi (976 km) of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, and sent back highly-detailed radar images showing long, linear, undulating dunes made of hydrocarbon sands that can help shed new light on Titan's winds.

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NASA's most experienced astronaut returns to Earth

International Space Station (ISS) Mission Commander Jeff Williams, returned to Earth today after clocking up a cumulative total of 534 space-days. Along with fellow Expedition 48 Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka, Colonel Williams touched down outside Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan on September 7 at 7:13 am local time (September 6 at 9:13 am PDT) in the Soyuz TMA-20M capsule.

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Juno probes Jupiter's stormy north pole

NASA has provided the first close-up and personal view of Jupiter's north pole with the release of images from the Juno orbiter's close encounter with the gas giant. According to the space agency, the unmanned spacecraft returned six megabytes of data over a one-and-a-half day period from its six-hour transit on August 27 at an altitude of 2,500 mi (4,200 km) above Jupiter's clouds. The result is more than a few surprises.

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Royal Navy's self-driving speedboat takes to the Thames

The Royal Navy's latest seagoing robot took to the waves today in the heart of London. Accompanied by patrol boat HMS Archer, the unmanned 32-ft (9.7-m) Maritime Autonomy Surface Testbed (MAST) autonomous speedboat negotiated traffic on the Thames estuary between Tower Bridge and Westminster bridge as part of the run-up to the Unmanned Warrior naval exercises.

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Plastic cloth makes for cooler clothing

Unless you're into bleeding-edge haute couture, wrapping yourself in cling film isn't likely to be your first choice in summer fashion. This might change your mind. A team from Stanford University has developed a new low-cost textile made of plastic that uses a combination of nanotechnology, photonics, and chemistry to cool the wearer in a new way, leaving them feeling almost four degrees Fahrenheit cooler compared to cotton clothing.

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Future City

A new Tales of Future Past section is up – Future City

The aliens are from Earth

A radio signal first identified as a possible transmission from an extraterrestrial civilization has turned out to be a false alarm, with Russian scientists confirming that it actually came from Earth. Recent reports had suggested that a powerful radio signal from a G-type star 94.4 light years away in the constellation of Hercules might be a deliberate message from an alien species, but it now seems likely that an old Cold War military satellite is the culprit.

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For sale: One slightly worn Space Age robot

A robotic relic of the Space Age is going up for auction for an estimated price of US$80,000. Looking like C3PO's down-at-heel cousin, the Power Driven Articulated Dummy (PDAD) was developed for NASA in the 1960s by the IIT Research Institute in Chicago and was designed to test spacesuits. The sale is part of R R Auction's Elite 100 Auction in Cambridge, Massachusetts, later this month.

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