What if space held the key to producing alternative energy crops on Earth? That’s what researchers are hoping to find in a new experiment on the International Space Station.
The experiment, National Lab Pathfinder-Cells 3, is aimed at learning whether microgravity can help jatropha curcas plant cells grow faster to produce biofuel, or renewable fuel derived from biological matter. Jatropha is known to produce high quality oil that can be converted into an alternative energy fuel, or biofuel.
By studying the effects of microgravity on jatropha cells, researchers hope to accelerate the …

The White House said on Sunday that President Barack Obama plans to outline his administration’s vision for NASA, along with an eventual trip to Mars, during a conference in Florida in April.
According to Reuters, Obama is in need of reconciliation to defend his commitment to the space agency after submitting his budget to Congress, which cancelled a program to return U.S. astronauts to the moon.
He said he would like to refocus NASA efforts on technologies to prepare for human missions to destinations within the solar system.
Obama’s budget would spend $6 …

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Friday officially opened the doors to its MIT Media Lab Complex, the school’s most famous interdisciplinary program.
The new building, designed by architect Fumihiko Maki and his Maki and Associates firm, broke ground in 2007. But the Media Lab’s quest for expansion has actually been 12 years in the making, according to Adele Naude Santos, dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning.
Fumihiko Maki, a winner of the Pritzker Prize for architecture, was present at the opening event but did not speak publicly. Instead, …

Apple finally gave us the date the first iPads will hit store shelves: April 3. We’ve been closely following the touch-screen tablet since Apple first announced it in late January, but here’s a quick guide for your most essential questions about the device.
First things first: How big is it?
The iPad’s screen offers a maximum resolution of 1,024×768 pixels and measures 9.7 inches diagonally, 5.75 inches wide, and 7.75 inches tall. An 0.86-inch bezel frames the screen (with a hair extra room on the bottom to account for the home button), …

Shortly after the Moon formed, an asteroid smacked into its southern hemisphere and gouged out a truly enormous crater, the South Pole-Aitken basin, almost 1,500 miles across and more than five miles deep.
“This is the biggest, deepest crater on the Moon — an abyss that could engulf the United States from the East Coast through Texas,” said Noah Petro of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The impact punched into the layers of the lunar crust, scattering that material across the Moon and into space. The tremendous heat …