A new trailer for the next Star Trek series, studying an asteroid from interstellar space, an experimental space engine takes flight, and loads more...

Pick o' the podcasts:

Spacepod: An interstellar visitor 

We Martians: What motivates deep space exploration?

Planetary Radio: Lightsail 2 spreads its wigs

From the video store:

The new trailer for 'Picard' is out:

India launches lunar lander mission: 

...here's how it should run:

Private solar sail ship spreads its wings

GIF courtesy of The Planetary Society

SpaceX's 'Hopper' prototype rocket scrubs launch test in spectacular fashion....

...then tries again, succeeding at it's first free flight!


Watch Russia's Soyuz spacecraft dock with the International Space Station 

Reading material: 

SpaceX launches cargo mission to the International Space Station using thrice re-used capsule and a twice re-used booster - and it just arrived 

What does the future hold for solar sailing?

Fossil clams ate evidence of an asteroid strike

General relativity passes latest test

Toyota to build Lunar rover for Japan

What happens in intergalactic space? 

NASA fast tracks habitation module for new Lunar space station 

The Milky Way: Cosmic cannibal 

Star Trek's planet killer becomes a promising new cancer therapy...

The link between science fiction and new technology is well established: Space travel? Jules Verne. Communications satellites? Arthur C Clarke. Now a super weapon from Star Trek has found it's way into the real world, but as something much more benign. 'Proton beams' are a type of weapon from Star Trek. In fact I'm pretty sure I've seen an episode of the original series where a giant robot that looked like a concrete windsock was using a proton beam  to destroy planets:

In the real world proton beams area actually awesome. They're weapons, but not against planets: They're being used as a new therapy against cancer, destroying the tumours with fewer side effects and less toxicity:

In a world where one in three of us will suffer with cancer at some point in our lives, we need all the arsenal we can get...

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's... a small tree?

The world gets weirder (to be frank I'm perfectly OK with that in this case): 

Now trees can fly. 

The Japanese art of Bonsai - basically growing a really small and beautifully gardened tree -  has been producing some astounding bits of horticulture for centuries. Bonsai trees have already been into space.....

...now they can fly under their own power... or at least the power of their levitating base.  

Once levitation was the province of sorcerers, witches, gods and demons. Today things are a bit different: There're a few ways to make something  something levitate: It can be done using electrostatics, with sound waves, using low temperatures and superconductors.....

....or as in this case - using magnetic fields. Now, you might think that it would take a rare and subtle genus, combined with a room full of expensive scientific equipment to pull this trick off. And you'd be dead wrong - here's an instructable for it!

Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Physics, and kickin' butt....

Imagine this brick is you, and I've just caught you stealing the chocolate M and M's...

There's an old, old saying: A nation that puts too great a divide between its scholars and its soldiers will end up thinking like cowards and and fighting like idiots. Well Niel DeGrasse Tyson may or may not have heard it, but I think he'd appreciate it: In the clip below he uses the mechanics of a wrestling move to demonstrate the mechanics of the relationship between the Earth and Moon:

 

He learned to wrestle in college, but he's not the first martial artist or scientist to notice the link between martial arts and Physics: Have a read of this article, where a number of physicists cum black belts go over how the some principles that make a rocket fly can teach you how to knock a mugger across the room. Or have a watch of York University Physics department's lecture on ass kicking: