DailyDirt: Out Into Space

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The promise of large-scale human expansion into space has been around for a long time, and we've already passed countless fiction-proposed deadlines for such a development. Still, while we're not living in moon cities as many may have predicted, we're constantly taking unprecedented steps outwards. Here are just a few of the latest:

• The NASA robot that helps out on the ISS now has a pair of brand new legs. They're nine feet long with seven joints and grapplers on the end, allowing it to perform lots of new tasks. [url]
• Scientists are researching whether earthly microorganisms could survive on Mars — to make sure we don't accidentally take them there. Though we haven't built any extraterrestrial human colonies, we have to be careful about unintentionally creating other ones. [url]
• Meanwhile, the solar system keeps getting bigger, with the recent discovery of a new planetoid. VP113 lies beyond Neptune and the Kuiper belt. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: mars, moon, nasa, planets, space