Geneva (AFP) July 10, 2025
When successful artist Ai-Da unveiled a new portrait of King Charles this week, the humanoid robot described what inspired the layered and complex piece, and insisted it had no plans to "replace" humans. The ultra-realistic robot, one of the most advanced in the world, is designed to resemble a human woman with an expressive, life-like face, large hazel eyes and brown hair cut in a bob.

Paris (AFP) July 16, 2025
Astronomers said Wednesday they had observed the moment when planets start forming around a distant star for the first time, revealing a process that sheds light on the birth of our own solar system. The new planetary system is forming around the baby star HOPS-315 - which resembles our own Sun in its youth - 1,300 light years from Earth in the Orion Nebula. Young stars are surrounded

Washington DC (UPI) Jul 17, 2025
A meteorite from Mars, the largest piece ever found on Earth, sold for $5.3 million to an anonymous bidder at a Sotheby's auction in New York on Wednesday. Bidding for the 54-pound, reddish-brown object began at $2 million, according to ABC News, and it went to $4.3 million plus $1 million in fees and taxes. The original owner wasn't disclosed. The rock, known as NWA 16788, is 70

Washington DC (UPI) Jul 16, 2025
Dreaming of designing part of a rocket for NASA? The space organization is offering a challenge for those who think they can solve a capability gap in its Stratospheric Projectile Entry Experiment on Dynamics (SPEED), a two-stage stratospheric drop test architecture. SPEED is under development to bridge the state-of-the-art gap that many NASA flagship missions need to reduce syst

Vienna (AFP) July 17, 2025
Austrian daredevil "fearless Felix" Baumgartner, who died on Thursday aged 56, stunned fans around the world by breaking the sound barrier in a hair-raising dive from the fringe of space more than a decade ago. Baumgartner's dramatic 2012 jump from a capsule more than 39 kilometres (24 miles) above the Earth propelled the extreme adventure-seeker into the record books. Sporting a "born t

Washington DC (UPI) Jul 16, 2025
Amazon's Project Kuiper broadband network got a literal boost from SpaceX Wednesday as a Falcon 9 rocket put several Kuiper satellites into orbit. The mission, titled KF-01, involved a Falcon 9 that launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Wednesday at 2:30 a.m. EDT, and carried 24 Kuiper craft into low Earth orbit at an altitude of 289 miles. "Congrats to t

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jul 18, 2025
Technicians completed the installation of solar panels on NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on June 14 and 16, marking one of the final stages of observatory assembly. The six-panel system, known as the Solar Array Sun Shield, will both power the spacecraft and protect its instruments from heat. "With the panels in place, the observatory is about 90% complete," said Jack Marshall, w

Washington DC (UPI) Jul 18, 2025
The four members of NASA's Crew-11 space mission entered quarantine in the Houston area ahead of their planned launch on July 13 from central Florida to the International Space Station. NASA's Crew 11 is the 11th operational mission of SpaceX's Dragon Endeavour spacecraft aboard a Falcon 9. On Thursday, they entered isolation at Johnson Space Center: NASA astronauts Zena Cardman

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Jul 18, 2025
A team of Chinese geologists has developed a high-fidelity Mars soil simulant, designated UPRS-1, that closely replicates the regolith of Utopia Planitia. This advancement is expected to aid upcoming exploration missions, including China's Tianwen 3 sample-return effort. UPRS-1 mimics the mechanical, spectral, physical and chemical characteristics of Martian soil based on data from the Zhu

Washington DC (UPI) Jul 19, 2025
SpaceX launched 24 more Starlink satellites late Friday from California into low-Earth orbit. The Falcon 9 lifted off at 8:52 p.m. PDT from Vandenberg Space Force Base's pad 4 East. About eight minutes later, Falcon 9's first-stage booster successfully landed on "Of Course I Still Love You" stationed in the Pacific Ocean. It was the booster's 14th mission, and 141st on this vesse