19.02.11

With Robotic Cargo Ferry Launch, Europe Will Become an Official Supplier to the ISS This Month

The ESA's newest Automated Transfer Vehicle--ATV-2, otherwise known as Johannes Kepler--is loaded up and primed for its February 15th launch to the International Space Station, marking a several significant milestones for the European Space Agency and its contribution
Read more...


Shifting Position of Magnetic North Requires Tampa Airport to Rearrange Runways

The north magnetic pole is slowly sliding from its current locale in the far north of Canada toward Russia at a rate of something like 40 miles per year, but most of us don't feel the repercussions of that. However, far from the frosty Canadian tundra, sunny Tampa, Fla.,
Read more...


Sikorsky and Eurocopter Compete To Build Super-High-Speed Choppers

Who will build the fastest experimental helicopter? The cabin of a helicopter flying faster than 170 knots (196 mph) is a perilous place. Vibrations experienced at such high speeds can quickly exhaust pilots, obscure instrument panels, and knock equipment loose. (Pilots
Read more...


Test Flight: These Tiny R/C Choppers Are Like Pocket Dogfighters

Gyroscopes and infrared blasters ready radio-controlled helicopters for midair battle Unsophisticated electronics and design used to keep tiny R/C helicopters out of the fight. Eventually, motors the size of aspirin capsules let companies stack two counter-rotating rotors
Read more...


The Navy's Next-Gen Electromagnetic Catapult System Hurls its First Planes Skyward

The official performance results aren't available yet, but General Atomics confirmed this afternoon that it's next-gen aircraft carrier launch system successfully launched an F/A-18E Super Hornet on Saturday, not with steam but with its new
Read more...


Five Contests That Recognize The Science Achievements of the Everyman

There's a long tradition of offering big cash prizes to entice talented and creative individuals to solve problems that have stymied industry and governments for decades. For example, in 1810, French cook Nicolas Appert won a 12,000-franc government prize for a food preservation
Read more...


A New Way of Flying

How a record-breaking pilot made it through the night in a sun-powered plane Born in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1952, the year the first commercial jet airliner took flight, André Borschberg grew up longing for the skyward frontier and the "freedom of three dimensions."
Read more...


Bee-Inspired Algorithm Helps UAVs Detect the Horizon For Improved Aerobatics

An autopilot system modeled after honeybee flight is faster and more accurate than gyroscope-based programs, according to a new study. By imitating how honeybees sense their surroundings,
Read more...


The Air Force's Top Secret Space Plane, in Orbit for Seven Months, is Coming Home

All good top secret robotic space plane test missions must come to an end, and so it goes for the Air Force's X-37B, otherwise known as the Orbital Test Vehicle 1 (OTV-1). After seven months of thrilling amateur satellite watchers with its shifting orbital flight patterns
Read more...


Solar Impulse HB-SIA

A clean-aviation milestone Zero-emission flight leapt forward in July, when Swiss pilot André Borschberg flew the solar- and battery-powered Solar Impulse HB-SIA for 26 hours, 9 minutes and 10 seconds, reaching a height of 28,500 feet before gliding back down
Read more...


All About the A380

Everyone is talking about the A380 today. Find out why here I live in the upper North Shore
Read more...


File-Sharing Group Mulls a Floating Pirate Ship of Servers in the Sky

Pirate Parties International, the central group that unites all of the disparate political Pirate Parties in other countries, recently had a meeting wherein a particularly bonkers proposal was discussed. The problem: Where can servers that store data frequently seen as unsavory
Read more...


Please, Don't Let This Be the Future of Air Travel

On your last flight, did you stare with envy at the people sitting in the exit row? Did you get a charley horse from trying to cross your legs under your tray table? Consider yourself lucky, pal. Your next budget flight might ask you to fly horseback style, squeezed
Read more...


Five Contests That Recognize The Science Achievements of the Everyman

There's a long tradition of offering big cash prizes to entice talented and creative individuals to solve problems that have stymied industry and governments for decades. For example, in 1810, French cook Nicolas Appert won a 12,000-franc government prize for a food preservation
Read more...


ALTB FAIL: Airborne Laser Weapon Fails Second Test Firing in a Row

The Missile Defense Agency's airborne laser weapon is supposed to save us all from imminent nuclear demise, but after yesterday's botched test firing - the second failure
Read more...


Video: Yale's Grab Lab Demonstrates an Unmanned Helicopter With a Grabbing Hand

Researchers at Yale's Grab Lab aren't about to let the nuances of rotary-wing flight restrict what unmanned aerial vehicles can do. A team there has developed a hand-like modular grasping and manipulation platform that can be fitted to the bellies of UAVs to provide them
Read more...


Flight attendant meltdown recreated by Hong Kong TV station

Who needs cover shots and voiceover when you can digitally re-create the moment? That's what staff at a Hong Kong TV station must have thought when they heard about the US flight attendant who made a hasty exit from his aircraft following an incident with a passenger this week. Steven Slater,
Read more...


Video: Virgin's VSS enterprise makes its first crewed test flight

Virgin Galactic just released some nice video of its latest SpaceShipTwo (aka VSS Enterprise) test flight, the first with the spacecraft's two-pilot flight crew aboard.
Read more...


Airbus plane of the future concept has smart fuselage, see-through walls

Of all the aviation tech emerging from the Farnborough International Airshow, Airbus' futurist visions are among the coolest. The aviation firm unveiled its
Read more...


Video: Electric Version of Tiniest Manned Plane Ever Takes to the Skies

An ultralight kit plane designed in the 1970s has become the first four-engined electric plane to take to the skies. Weighing in around 175 kilograms -- including the pilot -- the
Read more...


Video: An incredibly accurate (working!) hoverboard replica would make future-Marty proud

The closer we get to the year 2015, the louder people lament that our world hardly resembles the one depicted in Back to the Future II. Although it will be awhile before any of us coast around in a flying Delorean, we've piped down our complaints, as a young
Read more...


Why Can't Planes Fly Through Volcanic Ash? NASA Found Out the Hard Way

If you've been anywhere near a television or Web enabled device in the last week (and you must have been), you know that a volcanic eruption in Iceland has grounded airline flights across Europe and even halted a few flights into the northeastern-most
Read more...


Video: A Silent Rotor Blade Paves the Way for Super-Stealth Choppers

For all the government conspiracy militia nuts out there, I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that there is no such thing as silent, stealth black helicopters. The bad news is that, thanks to Eurocopter's noise-cancelling
Read more...


Video: world's biggest airship inflated for the first time

Airships of the future are getting a little closer to reality. A new time-lapse video shows the world's largest airship being inflated in an Alabama cattle barn, and the ship's manufacturer says it will be ready for test flights soon. It took six hours
Read more...


Rocket scientists use Darwinian software to evolve better ion engine designs

Charles Darwin's theories of evolution have revolutionized the way mankind understands its origin. Now, engineers suggest that the process of natural selection may have surprising implications for spacecraft
Read more...


Hovering vehicle can launch an observation platform 90 metres skyward

The Israelis are developing a hovering, rapidly deployable eye in the sky that smartly skirts the usual problems associated with hovering aircraft. Israel Aerospace Industries has worked up two functioning prototypes of a hovering
Read more...


Airbus plane of the future concept has smart fuselage, see-through walls

Of all the aviation tech emerging from the Farnborough International Airshow, Airbus' futurist visions are among the coolest. The aviation firm unveiled its
Read more...


Inside Sofia, NASA's Airplane-Mounted Telescope

After a slew of successful of space telescope repair missions and launches in recent months, NASA is taking it easy these days. To use the newest powerful telescope, scientists will take a ride in a convertible. Sort of. The space agency's new telescope is situated inside
Read more...


Aussie Scram-Jets Are Go

The University of Queensland will lead a $14 million international consortium to help develop scramjet-based access-to-space systems, flying an autonomous scramjet vehicle at eight times the speed of sound ? Mach 8, or 8600 km/h. In parallel,
Read more...


The World's Largest Airplane Graveyard in High Resolution, Now On Google Maps

Some take religious journeys to sacred places, others gather at the home fields of beloved
Read more...


Popular Science: breaking news, articles and media for Tech Savvy readers - technological innovations including aircraft, aviation, military aircraft, engines, maintenance and much more.

The team at Popular Science has been the leading source of science, technology and gadget news since 1872. Launched in 2008 this Australian edition brings you in-depth articles, breaking news, media and videos from all around the world. Discover new technology, test drive the future space science, keep up to date with the latest news on the best new robots and future space travel and explore the latest weapons for the military.

Popular Science - Best New Technology, Science Projects, Articles and News in Australia and New Zealand and from around the world, subscribe today!