Physical puzzles don't come with cheat codes. The Rubik's cube has vexed amateurs since its invention in 1974. There's a method to the puzzle, but to solve it, people need a grasp of the cube's mechanics and a good memory of its ever-changing faces. Or at least, they did, until Martin Španěl's master cubes augmented reality thesis did all the work.
The big rockets of our day get all of the fanfare during a launch, but often they're accompanied by tiny stowaways known as CubeSats, which hitch a ride and drop into orbit. They're convenient and able to get us into space cheaply, roughly the size of a Rubik's Cube and weigh only three pounds. A potential problem with them, though, is there's no way to control them once they're gone, and when we keep sending them farther from terra firma, they could pile up in space. To nip that problem in the bud early, an MIT professor has developed penny-sized thrusters that could help us take them down ourselves.
