After 25 years in orbit, the Chandra X-ray Observatory is under threat. We need to protect this monument to human ingenuity, argues Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Sam Howell tells New Scientist why NASA is so keen to visit Jupiter’s fourth-largest moon, Europa, and how the mission could help us figure out the likelihood of life elsewhere in the cosmos

Radio astronomers teamed up with SpaceX to find a promising solution for helping expensive telescopes avoid interference from thousands of Starlink satellites

Past observations have indicated that the icy moon of Jupiter has a vast subsurface ocean. Launching in October, NASA’s Europa Clipper will go there in search of evidence that it could support life

A chance to observe the high-speed re-entry of a falling satellite will give researchers important insights on how debris burns up in our atmosphere

Space missions are extremely hard. Things going wrong should be expected, so having a sensible plan B is crucial

Five satellites due to launch this week could be brighter than most stars, and astronomers fear the growth of such constellations could have a catastrophic impact

If you were standing on Mars as it was hit by charged particles from the sun, you might be able to see an aurora just like on Earth

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The European Space Agency is sending a probe to get a closer look at the asteroid Dimorphos, which had its orbit altered by NASA’s DART mission in 2022

The European Space Agency's Hera spacecraft must be thoroughly tested before being sent to investigate the aftermath of the collision of NASA's DART probe with Dimorphos

My first sight of Saturn through a telescope inspired my love of space. Dig out your telescopes or visit your local astronomy club, and you may be lucky enough to spot our sixth planet's stunning thick band of rings, says Leah Crane

A 6000-kilogram spacecraft will embark on a six-year journey to Jupiter to explore whether its icy moon Europa has the conditions to support life

Meet NASA’s NEO Surveyor, the space telescope identifying hazardous asteroids and comets within 48 million kilometres of Earth’s orbit

The largest and most ambitious Martian drone yet could carry kilograms of scientific equipment over great distances and set itself down on the Red Planet unassisted

Dangerous radiation reaches Mars at levels we aren't exposed to on Earth, which makes the Red Planet a particularly dangerous place to be during pregnancy

From nuclear strikes to giant spikes, discover the systems in place to prevent a collision and test your decision-making to see if you could avoid a catastrophic impact

Are humanoid robots the future of space exploration? New Scientist reporter James Woodford took NASA's Valkyrie for a spin to find out

NASA’s Valkyrie is undergoing tests to understand what it would take to get a humanoid robot onto offshore facilities or into space. New Scientist's James Woodford took the controls to see what it is capable of

Archaeologists are using AI and US spy satellite imagery from the cold war to find ancient underground aqueducts that helped humans survive in the desert

Artificial intelligence has more in common with ants than humans, says Neil Lawrence. Only by taking a more nuanced view of intelligence can we see how machines will truly transform society

What if tech bros ruled the world, asks Asif Kapadia's 2073. This docudrama is captivating and disturbing, but lacks enough heft to stand out

Google DeepMind claims its AlphaChip AI method can deliver “superhuman” chip designs that are already used in its data centres – but independent experts say public proof is lacking

Large language models can be used to scam humans, but AI is also susceptible to being scammed – and some models are more gullible than others

I have a confession to make. After taking a handful of autonomous taxi rides, I have gone from a hater to a friend of robot cars in just a few weeks, says Annalee Newitz

We seem to be in the final stage of the apartment bubble, with developers offering huge inventives to Chinese agents.

Gary is up to his usual schtick with Dani. Will he or the new stews ever learn? (Don’t answer that.)

It’s the second-shortest book to be awarded the prize.

In the 1960s and 1970s, NASA spent a lot of time thinking about whether toroidal (donut-shaped) fuel tanks were the way to go with its spacecraft. Toroidal tanks have a bunch of potential advantages over conventional spherical fuel tanks. For example, you can fit nearly 40% more volume within a toroidal tank than if you were using multiple spherical tanks within the same space. And perhaps most interestingly, you can shove stuff (like the back of an engine) through the middle of a toroidal tank, which could lead to some substantial efficiency gains if the tanks could also handle structural loads.

Because of their relatively complex shape, toroidal tanks are much more difficult to make than spherical tanks. Even though these tanks can perform better, NASA simply doesn’t have the expertise to manufacture them anymore, since each one has to be hand-built by highly skilled humans. But a company called Machina Labs thinks that they can do this with robots instead. And their vision is to completely change how we make things out of metal.

The fundamental problem that Machina Labs is trying to solve is that if you want to build parts out of metal efficiently at scale, it’s a slow process. Large metal parts need their own custom dies, which are very expensive one-offs that are about as inflexible as it’s possible to get, and then entire factories are built around these parts. It’s a huge investment, which means that it doesn’t matter if you find some new geometry or technique or material or market, because you have to justify that enormous up-front cost by making as much of the original thing as you possibly can, stifling the potential for rapid and flexible innovation.

On the other end of the spectrum you have the also very slow and expensive process of making metal parts one at a time by hand. A few hundred years ago, this was the only way of making metal parts: skilled metalworkers using hand tools for months to make things like armor and weapons. The nice thing about an expert metalworker is that they can use their skills and experience to make anything at all, which is where Machina Labs’ vision comes from, explains CEO Edward Mehr who co-founded Machina Labs after spending time at SpaceX followed by leading the 3D printing team at Relativity Space.

“Craftsmen can pick up different tools and apply them creatively to metal to do all kinds of different things. One day they can pick up a hammer and form a shield out of a sheet of metal,” says Mehr. “Next, they pick up the same hammer, and create a sword out of a metal rod. They’re very flexible.”

The technique that a human metalworker uses to shape metal is called forging, which preserves the grain flow of the metal as it’s worked. Casting, stamping, or milling metal (which are all ways of automating metal part production) are simply not as strong or as durable as parts that are forged, which can be an important differentiator for (say) things that have to go into space. But more on that in a bit.

The problem with human metalworkers is that the throughput is bad—humans are slow, and highly skilled humans in particular don’t scale well. For Mehr and Machina Labs, this is where the robots come in.

“We want to automate and scale using a platform called the ‘robotic craftsman.’ Our core enablers are robots that give us the kinematics of a human craftsman, and artificial intelligence that gives us control over the process,” Mehr says. “The concept is that we can do any process that a human craftsman can do, and actually some that humans can’t do because we can apply more force with better accuracy.”

This flexibility that robot metalworkers offer also enables the crafting of bespoke parts that would be impractical to make in any other way. These include toroidal (donut-shaped) fuel tanks that NASA has had its eye on for the last half century or so.

Machina Labs’ CEO Edward Mehr (on right) stands behind a 15 foot toroidal fuel tank.Machina Labs

“The main challenge of these tanks is that the geometry is complex,” Mehr says. “Sixty years ago, NASA was bump-forming them with very skilled craftspeople, but a lot of them aren’t around anymore.” Mehr explains that the only other way to get that geometry is with dies, but for NASA, getting a die made for a fuel tank that’s necessarily been customized for one single spacecraft would be pretty much impossible to justify. “So one of the main reasons we’re not using toroidal tanks is because it’s just hard to make them.”

Machina Labs is now making toroidal tanks for NASA. For the moment, the robots are just doing the shaping, which is the tough part. Humans then weld the pieces together. But there’s no reason why the robots couldn’t do the entire process end-to-end and even more efficiently. Currently, they’re doing it the “human” way based on existing plans from NASA. “In the future,” Mehr tells us, “we can actually form these tanks in one or two pieces. That’s the next area that we’re exploring with NASA—how can we do things differently now that we don’t need to design around human ergonomics?”

Machina Labs’ ‘robotic craftsmen’ work in pairs to shape sheet metal, with one robot on each side of the sheet. The robots align their tools slightly offset from each other with the metal between them such that as the robots move across the sheet, it bends between the tools. Machina Labs

The video above shows Machina’s robots working on a tank that’s 4.572 m (15 feet) in diameter, likely destined for the Moon. “The main application is for lunar landers,” says Mehr. “The toroidal tanks bring the center of gravity of the vehicle lower than what you would have with spherical or pill-shaped tanks.”

Training these robots to work metal like this is done primarily through physics-based simulations that Machina developed in house (existing software being too slow), followed by human-guided iterations based on the resulting real-world data. The way that metal moves under pressure can be simulated pretty well, and although there’s certainly still a sim-to-real gap (simulating how the robot’s tool adheres to the surface of the material is particularly tricky), the robots are collecting so much empirical data that Machina is making substantial progress towards full autonomy, and even finding ways to improve the process.

An example of the kind of complex metal parts that Machina’s robots are able to make.Machina Labs

Ultimately, Machina wants to use robots to produce all kinds of metal parts. On the commercial side, they’re exploring things like car body panels, offering the option to change how your car looks in geometry rather than just color. The requirement for a couple of beefy robots to make this work means that roboforming is unlikely to become as pervasive as 3D printing, but the broader concept is the same: making physical objects a software problem rather than a hardware problem to enable customization at scale.

Aside from offering a more powerful console, the PS5 Pro also packs a sneaky theme for PlayStation fans to uncover - something Sony hadn't previously discussed.

Destiny 2's Exotic vendor, Xur, is back again this week. Here's how to find him, what he's selling, and whether we recommend his offerings before he vanishes again.

Scientists say geoengineering, or doing things like intentionally increasing Earth’s reflectivity or blocking the sun, is a “really big deal” in slowing down climate change. Here are the ideas they are proposing.

More than 80 per cent of B.C.'s water basins are experiencing level 4 or 5 drought conditions, with salmon in many parts of the province struggling to make it to their spawning grounds.

NASA said Thursday that the study of UFOs will require new scientific techniques, including advanced satellites as well as a shift in how unexplained sightings are perceived.

Researchers calculated that if 30 per cent of vehicles in Chicago currently running on combustion engines were converted to electric, the reduction in pollution would save billions in health care costs every year. 

As artificial intelligence becomes more common in university classrooms, some professors are weighing the benefits — and downsides — of students using it for research projects.

After a dismal start, the UN is hosting a "halftime summit" about its 15-year plan to meet a series of human-development targets by 2030. Delegates will try to focus on problems like extreme poverty and gender equality while watching for sparks between the representatives of Ukraine and Russia.

The Marine Institute and OceanGate signed a partnership in early 2023, but it remains unclear if the Memorial University campus knew the ill-fated Titan submersible was unregulated, unclassed and uncertified.

The Health and Human Services Department employs 294 people whose jobs focus on diversity, and the department maintains seven separate "minority health" offices spread across its various agencies, according to a new report that suggests it will be tough for the incoming Trump administration to unwind it all.

President-elect Donald Trump has announced that he will nominate former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to be the U.S. ambassador to Israel.

According to a report Tuesday, the league deliberately decided not to impose an immediate fine on San Francisco 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa for wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat during a postgame television interview.

Every stock trader should consider a virtual private network to safeguard their trading, according to tech guru Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson.

Getting virus alerts on your iPhone? Tech expert Kurt “CyberGuy" Knutsson helps you learn how to handle fake scam alerts and boost security.

The Adison Vein Locator gives medical professionals Superman-like X-ray vision for finding patients' veins for easy insertion of needles.

A virtual private network is a service that encrypts your internet connection, ensuring your online activity remains private and secure.

Kurt “CyberGuy" Knutsson discusses how Axiom Space and luxury designer Prada are collaborating on NASA's Artemis III spacesuit design.

ALEXIS SANCHEZ returns to former club Arsenal tonight - and Manchester United fans are desperate to see him celebrate if he scores at the Emirates..

Club captain Jordan Henderson, summer signing Naby Keita and centre back Joe Gomez were all absent for the shock midweek Champions League defeat to Red Star Belgrade..