It's not everyday that you see a design that's part plane, part helicopter that stands upright on the ground. Its tail splits into four "legs" that serve as landing gear. It lifts off like a helicopter, hovers and then leans forward to fly horizontally with the pilot lying down like in a hang-glider.

Researchers have developed a robot capable of scaling vertical walls. The new robot, whose foot pads are covered with the same type of adhesive found on the feet of geckos, was named "stickybot" by its inventors.

New research is turning the science-fiction scenario of controlling machines with our minds into a reality. Recent results from a joint project between the Mayo Clinic and the University of North Florida show that it is possible to "type" letters on a computer screen with nothing more than a thought and a brain-computer interface.

If hydrogen is ever to play a significant role as a clean, everyday energy source, it will need a safe and reliable distribution system.

Diamonds are renowned for their seemingly flawless physical beauty and their interplay with light. Now researchers are taking advantage of the mineral's imperfections to control that light at the atomic scale, generating one photon at a time.

NASA and General Motors are working together to accelerate development of the next generation of robots and related technologies for use in the automotive and aerospace industries.

Physicists have built an enhanced version of an experimental atomic clock based on a single aluminum atom that is now the world’s most precise clock, more than twice as precise as the previous pacesetter based on a mercury atom.

An innovative computational technique that draws on statistics, imaging and other disciplines has the capability to detect errors in sensitive technological systems ranging from satellites to weather instruments.

NASA's first flight test for the agency's next-generation spacecraft and launch vehicle system, called Ares I-X, will bring NASA one step closer to its exploration goals.

The US military can now calibrate high-power laser systems, such as those intended to defuse unexploded mines, more quickly and easily thanks to a novel nanotube-coated power measurement device.

A research team from Northeastern University and the National Institute of Standards and Technology has discovered, serendipitously, that a residue of a process used to build arrays of titania nanotubes—a residue that wasn’t even noticed before this—plays an important role in improving the performance of the nanotubes in solar cells that produce hydrogen gas from water.

NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory and its Taurus booster lift off from Vandenberg Air Force Base. A contingency was declared a few minutes later.

The Space Power Facility at NASA Glenn Research Center's Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, Ohio, houses the world's largest vacuum chamber. It measures 100 feet in diameter and is a towering 122 feet tall. The facility is currently undergoing construction to support Orion crew exploration vehicle testing in 2010.

NASA and 11 other research groups are testing two non-petroleum-based jet fuels in the pursuit of alternative fuels that can power commercial jets and address rising oil costs.

International effort will encourage partnerships between humanities scholars, computer and information scientists, librarians and others.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have developed a method to measure the toughness — the resistance to fracture — of the thin insulating films that play a critical role in high-performance integrated circuits.

Data analytics gives law enforcement and intelligence agencies powerful tools that still protect privacy and civil liberties.

Engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., have completed first-round testing of a critical motor for NASA's new Ares I rocket. The Ares I is a two-stage rocket that will launch astronauts aboard the Orion crew capsule on missions to the International Space Station and to the moon by 2020.

Technique could yield insights into brain function, expedite drug development.

Flexible web of micro-sensors enables eye-shaped camera, heralds new class of electronics technology that can conform to almost any shape

Imagine a robotic David Beckham six times smaller than an amoeba playing with a “soccer ball” no wider than a human hair … with all of the action happening on a field the size of single grain of rice.

Scientists at the University of Konstanz (Germany) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (United States), have demonstrated an ultrafast laser that offers a record combination of high speed, short pulses and high average power. The new laser is expected to have a range of applications from gas sensors to communications, but in particular, say researchers, it could boost the sensitivity of astronomical tools searching for other Earthlike planets as much as 100 fold.

Graphene, a new material that combines aspects of semiconductors and metals, could be a leading candidate to replace silicon in applications ranging from high-speed computer chips to biochemical sensors.

The JILA strontium clock would neither gain nor lose a second in more than 200 million years, compared to NIST F-1’s current accuracy of over 80 million years.

One of the immediate applications of carbon nanotubes (CNT) is as an additive to polymers to create electrically conducting plastics—a relatively low CNT concentration can dramatically change the polymer‘s electrical conductivity by orders of magnitude, from an insulator to a conductor.

A team of scientists has detected the lowest frequency radar echo from the moon ever seen with earth-based receivers.

The Naval Research Laboratory's Naval Center for Space Technology has achieved a key milestone toward the development of autonomous servicing of unaided spacecraft. Working with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), NRL has developed, tested and ground-demonstrated guidance and control algorithms to allow a robotic servicing vehicle to autonomously rendezvous and dock with customer satellites not pre-designed for docking.

In the world of commercial materials, lighter and cheaper is usually better, especially when those attributes are coupled with superior strength and special properties, such as a material's ability to remember its original shape after it's been deformed by a physical or magnetic force.

How do you survive in a remote, mountainous region that has no water or wind and sometimes goes without sunlight for weeks? This is not the premise for a survivalist reality show; it's a question NASA must answer before sending humans to live and work on the moon.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed an imaging system that quickly maps the mechanical properties of materials — how stiff or stretchy they are, for example — at scales on the order of billionths of a meter.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) completed its Autonomous Airborne Refueling Demonstration program this month, showing that unmanned aircraft can autonomously perform in-flight refueling under operational conditions.

Hypersonic propulsion using supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet) technology offers the possibility of very high speeds and fuel efficiencies. The technology has the potential to put numerous defense and civilian aerospace applications within reach during the next couple of decades.

Stanford Racing Wins $1 Million Second Prize, Victor Tango Takes Home $500,000 Third Prize

Looking for a cheap fare 'round the world? Your search is over. A NASA team has built a small, low-cost satellite and it's almost ready to fly.

A tiny sensor that can detect magnetic field changes as small as 70 femtoteslas has been demonstrated at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

NASA will use the cold, harsh, isolated landscape of Antarctica to test one of its concepts for astronaut housing on the moon. The agency is sending a prototype inflatable habitat to Antarctica to see how it stands up during a year of use.

Single carbon nanotube is fully functional radio, receiving music over standard radio bandwidth.

US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has realeased the 2008 Fuel Economy Guide.

Metamaterials are an exotic class of materials, whose properties are due to their structure rather than their composition.

The basic idea is very straightforward: place very large solar arrays into continuously and intensely sunlit Earth orbit (1,366 watts/m2), collect gigawatts of electrical energy, electromagnetically beam it to...

An innovative and inexpensive way of making nanomaterials on a large scale has resulted in novel forms of advanced materials that pave the way for exceptional and unexpected optical properties.

A starburst of wrinkles form in a thin film material when a drop of water is placed on the film.

Energy from tiny movements, ultrasound waves and even bloodflow can charge the devices

Crafted with breakthrough manufacturing technique, centimeter-long fibers are visible to the naked eye.

Bricks made from coal-fired power plant waste (fly ash).