Technology, Innovation & Outdoor News

Race against reentry: The wild plan to save a decaying NASA spacecraft

June 18, 2026 | David Szondy
In a historic first, Northrop Grumman is set to launch a rescue mission to save a NASA space telescope from plunging into the Earth's atmosphere using a service robot to capture the stricken craft and boost it into a new, safer orbit.

World's first consumer wing-in-ground effect aircraft takes flight

June 17, 2026 | Omar Kardoudi
Navee, a Chinese mobility brand best known for e-scooters and e-dirt bikes, just revived one of the Cold War's strangest engineering ideas, a craft called the WaveFly 5X that's half plane, half boat, and aimed it squarely at recreational riders.

Life-saving autonomous drone could find people who fall off ships

June 18, 2026 | Etiido Uko
“Man overboard!” The dreaded call that starts a race against time and the often treacherous sea. Sadly, the sea often wins, mainly due to reaction times. Researchers at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) are now developing an onboard drone that aids rescues without human intervention.

Top Stories

This newly completed tiny house pushes the limits of tiny living with its substantial size and apartment-like interior. Measuring 399 sq ft, it offers enough space for full-time small living, even for a family.
How important is portability to you in a tiny house? If the answer is along the lines of "not very," then the Lucia might be of interest. It trades ease of movement for a more spacious and practical interior with a rustic aesthetic.
As is the case with cameras, the best multitool is the one you have on you. Following that line of thinking, the K-Smart X might just be one of the best, as it's designed to clip unobtrusively right onto your belt.
A new titanium multitool is available for backing on Kickstarter, and it might be one of the most well-organized tools on the market, featuring 70 tools distributed across five bank-card-sized plates.
Who would have ever imagined we’d live to see a day where a Ford Escort would boast a better power-to-weight ratio than a Porsche 911? A proper working-class car turned into a sexy rear-wheel-drive, sub-2,000-lb, manual sports car that revs to 10,000 rpm!
Many campers love a compact trailer for towing but a space that lives like a small home at camp. The new Ortsan Mini House Caravan does both, towing small but blossoming open upon arrival to nearly triple its living space.

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Health and Science news from our sister site: Refractor
A common laxative may do more than aid digestion: it could sharpen memory and attention in people with depression. This existing drug, currently used to treat chronic constipation, has shown promise in tackling these often-overlooked cognitive issues.
Just what causes things to “not all happen at once” remains an open question. So University of Birmingham physicist Giovanni Barontini decided to go back to basics and build a whole new universe to watch time unfold from scratch.
Jacob Haqq-Misra and Eric Wolf, researchers with the charity Blue Marble Space, argue in their recently published paper that Earth could stay green for nearly 1.9 billion years or more, depending on how the future plays out.
We might be on the verge of a critical breakthrough treatment for pattern hair loss, with a novel slow-release oral drug meeting its significant endpoints in a Phase II/III trial of 519 patients. The next results are due later this year.
Colorectal cancer has long been linked to a microbial imbalance in the gut. A new study suggests this dynamic is more complicated than initially thought, with not just bacteria behind it but the viruses living inside them.
Researchers tracked pet owners across five days to see whether interacting with a dog or cat influences mood in real time. Here's what they found.

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Editor's Picks

I'm a sucker for a good "reinventing the wheel" story, and David Henson's 'SurfacePlan' concept is an odd a take on one of humanity's greatest inventions as we've seen in a long time. It's designed to replace engines and drivetrains altogether.
It was cold – but nowhere near what I expected; I’ve been colder in an outdoor swimming pool in Australia. It's part of a global feedback loop, the scale of which I only began to comprehend when I saw this remarkable continent for myself.
Roboticists today are wrestling with the question of whether AI needs a body? If so, what kind? And then there’s the “how” of it all; if embodied intelligence is the way forward to true artificial general intelligence, could soft robots be the next step?
I spent a few nights with the Akaso Sight-300 and came away fairly impressed. My previous experiences with night vision have been with very high-end scopes, so I wasn't sure what to expect on something that costs several thousand dollars less.
The LEO Solo just went up for preorder, pitched as an FAA Part 103-friendly (no pilot license required), single-seat personal eVTOL. It's supposedly landing in late 2025.
Britain's DragonFire laser weapon upped the ante on November 20 at the Ministry of Defence's Hebrides Range in Scotland when the high-powered, solid-state laser for the Royal Navy shot down drones flying at 351 knots (404 mph, 650 km/h).
After Volkswagen split its midsize van lineup into two distinct model lines, the future of VW van life took the proverbial fork in the road. Spacecamper is the latest to convert a Caravelle, and its new camper arrives as a fast, versatile adventurer.
Hybrid commuter bikes generally aren't known for being all that exciting. That's why some cyclists are taking old speed-oriented lugged-steel road bikes that would otherwise go unused, and converting them into zippy, retro-cool city bikes. Here's how you can do it, too.