05/07/12 — Experts from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Aerospace Robotics and Control Laboratory (ARCL) announce the successful development of a flying robot capable of perching on a human hand at landing. This is made possible by sophisticated control algorithms, coupled with an innovative design of the airplane itself. The prototype has articulated wings and no vertical tail, allowing it to complete a variety of maneuvers that conventional aircraft are simply not capable of. Researchers drew their inspiration from how actual birds fly, since they had millions of years at their disposal to become as efficient as possible at flying.…

04/23/12 — Pasadena, CA—New report describes the results of a study sponsored by the Keck Institute for SpaceStudies (KISS) to investigate the feasibility of identifying, robotically capturing, and returning an entire Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) to the vicinity of the Earth by the middle of the next decade.  The KISS study was performed by people from Ames Research Center, Glenn Research Center, Goddard Space Flight Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Johnson Space Center, Langley Research Center, the California Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon, Harvard University, the Naval Postgraduate School,University of California at Los Angeles, University of California at Santa Cruz, University of Southern California, Arkyd…