Bill Christensen

An asteroid belt may have been found surrounding a star much like our own Sun, according to Dr. Charles Beichman of CIT. His team used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to make the discovery.

Gregory Benford, professor of physics at UC Irvine (and noted science fiction author) believes that a spacecraft powered by a special kind of solar sail could reach Mars in just one month.

Scientists and science fiction athors have been thinking about emergency rescues in space for almost as long as they have thought about voyages in space.

With a diameter of at least 450,000 kilometers, the coma of Comet Machholz is at least three times wider than the planet Jupiter.

Using a $100,000 NASA grant, Peter Ling of the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center has created a robotic tomato harvester to keep astronauts on task.

The secret of RoboCoaster G2 -- it's the only industrial-grade robot available as an amusement park ride, and it now travels on a track that can be made to any configuration.

SMART-1, the European Space Agency craft currently in orbit around the moon, makes use of a technology that was pure science fiction until the 1960s - the ion drive.

Currently under development, the Terminator Tether will provide a low-cost, lightweight and reliable method of removing objects from Low Earth Orbit.

An electrodynamic tether (EDT) is a simple idea, but one with an amazing number of uses.

Our friends at DARPA are not the only ones interested in science-fiction solutions, the USAF recently took delivery of a new study regarding the military potential of teleportation.

University of Florida biomedical engineer Dr. Thomas DeMarse has created a "brain in a dish" that can interact with a computer flight simulation.

Magnetized-beam plasma propulsion, or MagBeam propulsion, could cut the time required for long journeys around the solar system from years to weeks.

In the NEEMO 7 experiment, the "patient" is off Key Largo and the surgeon is in Canada, 1300 miles away.