Microsoft Is Building a Spaceship Out of Spare Parts
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A look at the key assets that will have to be combined: Most of them are unusually delicate machines with lots of interdependencies that well could be thrown off by a combination.
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NASA has awarded a $330.6 million contract to the aerospace company Lockheed Martin to design and build a robot spaceship to carry replacement parts to the Hubble Space Telescope to keep it operating for another five to seven years.
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Future space explorers might bring back more than just pictures from their excursions -- they could mine the planets for profit. By Mark Baard.
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Support is growing for a human mission to be sent to repair the Hubble space telescope instead of robots.
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Trying to save the famed Hubble Space Telescope (news - web sites) with a robot would cost $2 billion with just a 50-50 chance of success, an aerospace
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A new product lets workers combine simple bits of software to create business tools.
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SIR Richard Branson has said one of the next projects he wants to undertake is building a Virgin hotel in space. The multi-millionaire entrepreneur is working on plans for Virgin Galactic Airways and has designers
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Microsoft chief provides a few more details on company's effort to build a set of services in the Internet cloud.
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pioneering bid to win a $10 million (5.6 million pounds) prize and prove that space is open for business. space travel as ordinary as a Caribbean cruise.
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A CARGO spaceship has blasted off carrying vital Christmas provisions for the international space station, where supplies for the two crew members have run critically short.
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SPACE.com / The pieces are coming together for NASA's next spaceship Orion as space agency engineers begin working with lead contractor Lockheed Martin to shape the vehicle's cockpit.
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Re-usable craft can carry a 0.5-kilogram payload up one kilometer in three seconds.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft released the commercial version of its software for robots on Wednesday, hoping to shape the market much as it did for PC software a few decades ago. Its Robotics Studio includes programming tools intended to make it easier to write robot applications, and a runtime environment that allows them to be used and reused on different types of hardware. The software is free for hobbyists and academic use; companies that want to use it commercially must buy a license, which starts at $399. The software is for programming all types of robots, according to Microsoft, from toys all the way up to industrial equipment. Microsoft sees the robot marketÂ as being in a similar state as the PC market in the late 1970s. The hardware for building robots, including processors and storage, has become relatively cheap, but the industry lacks accessible programming tools and a common software platform that allows applications to be reused. Windows helped solve this for PCs, providing a common platform and tools on which the industry could focus its efforts. Microsoft hopes to do something similar with Robotics Studio -- although it remains to be seen if its PC expertise will translate into the world of robots. Robotics Studio 1.0 includes a programming environment that supports the languages in Microsoft's Visual Studio toolset, including Visual Basic, as well as drag-and-drop tools for beginners. The software has a simulation environment so developers can visualize their robots before they build them, using a processing engine licensed from Ageia Technologies. It also includes some sample code and tutorials. The run-time environment supports applications written for robots with 8-bit, 16-bit or 32-bit processors, including multicore chips. The applications can run on the robot itself or on a PC. Microsoft lined up about 30 partners to support its efforts. Among them, Robotics Studio is compatible with Lego Group's popular Mindstorms robot kit and iRobot's Roomba interface. About a million "personal robots" will be sold worldwide this year, Microsoft said, citing figures from the International Federation of Robots. The number is small compared to the PC market, but the company expects it to grow quickly in the next few years. The Microsoft robotics developers' site contains more information, including a link to download Robotics Studio. The software runs on Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2. Users also need Internet Explorer 5.01 or later.
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The successful X-Prize mission of Burt Rutan&#39;s SpaceShipOne last week was a major success for the commercial space industry. But although that success has led to the creation of space
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The PC maker is gearing up for the fall with new printers, TVs and a spiced-up desktop.
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The main oxygen generator aboard the International Space Station, which has been malfunctioning since last month, was partially repaired using spare parts that arrived last week.
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Enterprise Products Partners builds for the future.