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"Hbar Technologies plans a Kickstarter effort to raise US $200,000 for the next phase design of an antimatter-propelled spaceship. The two scientists behind this design effort are a veteran Fermilab particle accelerator scientist and a former Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist and founding director of the U.S. Center for Space Nuclear Research. They originally developed it for NASA at the turn of the millennium."

At 8:33 a.m., (Japan Standard Time) January 15, 2017, SS-520 No. 4, JAXA's sounding rocket launched from the Uchinoura Space Center. Through SS-520 No. 4 launch, JAXA sought for research and development of launch vehicles and satellites and the launch demonstration of TRICOM-1, its onboard nanosat that weighs about 3 kilograms. The launch was part of Japanese government's program for development of launch vehicles and satellites in public-private partnerships. Long story short: Space-X has the better fireworks

Sounds like Microsoft is developing a full Linux binary compatibility layer for Win 10 using syscall translation (like for example FreeBSD has for Linux binaries). In simpler terms: You can run any Linux binary (from the Ubuntu base or any of the packages) directly from Windows. No virtual machine. No emulation layer. No recompiling like SUA or Cygwin.

A North Carolina State University researcher has developed a more efficient, less expensive way of cooling electronic devices - particularly devices that generate a lot of heat, such as lasers and power devices.

An autonomous helicopter developed by ETH.

A UK-based start-up is developing printable, thin-film plastic solar cells aimed at providing affordable electricity to individual dwellings that have no grid connection, such as those in rural Africa

A low-cost rubber robot that can change color to match its surroundings like a chameleon, light up in the dark, change temperatures and fit into tight places is under development at DARPA for potential defense and surveillance applications.

slashdot describes the drill as "a self-driving mole developed by the German space agency (DLR)". This seems to be the drill: GEMS - a mole to explore the interior of Mars, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/OCEANSE.2009.5278132. Interesting news for all the roots people :)

any of the geeks tried this already? Francesco?

nobody ... you are not as geeky as I thought ...

Superconducting technology developed for the International Space Station could protect humans on the way to the asteroids or Mars. But will it be worth the cost?

A crack team of engineers at the University of Illinois has developed an electronic circuit that autonomously self-heals when its metal wires are broken.

Physicists in Germany have developed the first-ever "nano-ear" capable of detecting sound on microscopic length scales with an estimated sensitivity that is six orders of magnitude below the threshold of human hearing.

one can see that you are in bed and bored :-)

"...scientists in Germany have built a device that can effectively make objects invisible to sound waves. The performance of the acoustic "invisibility cloak" exceeds that of existing electromagnetic devices and could open up new ways of manipulating waves, including the development of shields against seismic waves."

shit.... they are a few months ahead of us it seems ... :-( what is the impact on our ariadna??

An international team of researchers have developed a new type of gyroscope that is the first to measure the "wobble" in the rotational axis of the Earth from a ground-based laboratory. Astronomers normally track this wobble by continuously monitoring the position of distant objects, such as quasars. But this new method will provide a much simpler and cheaper alternative to these large-scale astronomical readings, the scientists claim.

is this of any use for spacecraft?

mmm it's like saying that you can replace satellite tracking by accelerometers on-board satellites... for Leo: you'd better put an atomic gyro on a spacecraft these laser gyro are huge !

A new class of 2D semiconductor has been developed by researchers in the US. The free-standing quantum membranes, which are made of indium arsenide (InAs) and are just a few layers thick, have properties that are in stark contrast to the semiconductor layers used in conventional transistors.

Aerographite. This post was originally published on Mashable. German scientists have developed a sturdy material called Aerographite made mostly of air, opening up huge implications for the future development of electronics. The jet-black, non-transparent porous carbon material - which was created by scientists at Kiel University and Hamburg University of Technology - was detailed in the July edition of scientific journal Advanced Materials .

New technology (STARE-a constellation of nano-satellites) for tracking satellites and space debris could improve the accuracy from 1km (current by NORAD) to less than 100m. Increasing the reliability of collision detection, preventing 99% of false warnings.

Progress in atomic, optical and quantum science1, 2 has led to rapid improvements in atomic clocks. At the same time, atomic clock research has helped to advance the frontiers of science, affecting both fundamental and applied research. The ability to control quantum states of individual atoms and photons is central to quantum information science and precision measurement, and optical clocks based on single ions have achieved the lowest systematic uncertainty of any frequency standard3, 4, 5. Although many-atom lattice clocks have shown advantages in measurement precision over trapped-ion clocks6, 7, their accuracy has remained 16 times worse8, 9, 10. Here we demonstrate a many-atom system that achieves an accuracy of 6.4 × 10−18, which is not only better than a single-ion-based clock, but also reduces the required measurement time by two orders of magnitude. By systematically evaluating all known sources of uncertainty, including in situ monitoring of the blackbody radiation environment, we improve the accuracy of optical lattice clocks by a factor of 22. This single clock has simultaneously achieved the best known performance in the key characteristics necessary for consideration as a primary standard-stability and accuracy. More stable and accurate atomic clocks will benefit a wide range of fields, such as the realization and distribution of SI units11, the search for time variation of fundamental constants12, clock-based geodesy13 and other precision tests of the fundamental laws of nature. This work also connects to the development of quantum sensors and many-body quantum state engineering14 (such as spin squeezing) to advance measurement precision beyond the standard quantum limit.

Despite the benefits of low-temperature fuel cell technologies, they cannot directly use biomass as a fuel because of the lack of an effective catalyst system. However, Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have developed a low-temperature fuel cell that directly converts a wide variety of biomass sources to electricity. Possible application areas are local electricity supply in developing countries

Plastic needs a timescale of millenia to dissolve in the ocean and in the meantime it is accumulated in the water due to systematic dumping of garbage in the ocean since decades. Deploying buoyant devices at the location of the gyres (permanent circular currents in the ocean) is proposed for collecting the thin particles. The ambitious concept was developped by a Delft student, presented at a TEDx (see link), made a feasibility study through crowdfunding and now announces a public contest for developing mechanical parts of the harvesting system.