Nasa

The biggest, most sophisticated Mars rover ever built — a car-size vehicle bristling with cameras, microphones, drills and lasers — blasted off Thursday as part of an ambitious, long-range project to bring the first Martian rock samples back to Earth to be analyzed for evidence of ancient life. NASA’s Perseverance rode a mighty Atlas V rocket into a clear morning sky in the world’s third and final Mars launch of the summer. The plutonium-powered, six-wheeled rover will drill down and collect t

Venus is closer to Earth than Mars, but because it’s hellhole that’s unforgiving to rovers, we still don’t know much about its surface. NASA and JPL recently launched a heroX design contest for mechanical sensors that would help its AREE (automaton rover for extreme environments) rover detect and avoid rough terrain. It recently picked the winner, and said it received such an “incredible” response from the community that it added two finalists and 10 honorable mention entries.

The rover it will ride in on is the size of a compact car.

Based on the principals of chainmail armor, NASA's "Superelastic" tires can withstand more deformation than any other non-pneumatic tire.

"Secret airship"? And what is "Ltare"?

Welcome to TRANSLOGIC World Report: Your weekly roundup of transportation tech news from around the web.

Today marked the penultimate flight for the NASA shuttle program with the 25th and final liftoff of the space shuttle Endeavour. The Endeavour will deliver equipment and supplies to the ISS including a particle physics experiment module (Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer) and a payload platform (ExPRESS Logistics Carrier).

Well, it's not exactly perpetual motion or energy, but it's getting closer than most such attempts. Plus, instead of being backed by some sort of random crackpot scientist, this particular project has the backing of NASA and the U.S. Navy. So, what is it? (Take a deep breath.) The Sounding Oceanographic Lagrangrian Observer Thermal Recharging (SOLO-TREC) autonomous underwater vehicle. Says Jack Jones, a JPL principal engineer and SOLO-T

General Motors R2 – Click above for high-res image gallery

Now here's a partnership we didn't see coming: Chrysler and NASA have jumped into bed to share research on things like radar, materials and robotics. While we can't imagine Chrysler has too much to add to that discussion, the partnership could have a wide-ranging impact on the company's future products. Neither NASA nor Chrysler is exactl

In Episode 1.1 of TRANSLOGIC, we introduced you to the HumanCar Imagine_PS, something that looks like a modern-day railroad car. What makes the Imagine_PS go is good old elbow grease (and a lot of it -- think of the vehicle as a four-man rowing machine), running on calories as opposed to carbons. The vehicle's two electric motors in the wheels generate about four horsepower (about the power of a weed whacker), creating what inventor Charles S. Greenwood calls a "bionic human hybrid." Drivers can

With no time on its hands for promotional appearances at glitzy European autoshows, one of America's most advanced electric vehicles has been busy being put through its paces on the torturous terrain found at Black Point Lava Flow in Arizona. The Lunar Electric Rover (LER) has spent the last couple weeks wandering about this wasteland simulating a search for lost crew members in a trial that's putting the modern plug-in electric car arc