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Insects can execute flying feats more impressive than fighter jets, and a team of researchers has now learned the trick behind one of them. They used high speed video cameras and a new 3D reconstruction technique to show how fruit flies execute their acrobatic turns. As they report in the 9 April Physical Review Letters, despite the complex wing motions, a fly can execute quick pirouettes by adjusting just a single parameter that controls the difference between the way its left and right wings oscillate. The results may be relevant for engineers designing flight control strategies for tiny robotic insects for search-and-rescue and surveillance.

The testing of the second-generation lunar hopper is being carried out under the supervision of engineers from the nearby Draper Laboratory with an eye toward competing for the Google Lunar X Prize in 2012.

Although planetary rovers are not new, the hopper concept could add a new dimension to robotic planetary exploration, one that Tuohy said could inspire a new generation of engineers, technologists and scientists.

The original Galaxy Zoo was launched in July 2007, with a data set made up of a million galaxies imaged with the robotic telescope of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. With so many galaxies, the team thought that it might take at least two years for visitors to the site to work through them all. Within 24 hours of launch, the site was receiving 70,000 classifications an hour, and more than 50 million classifications were received by the project during its first year, from almost 150,000 people.