Stories by Michael Cooney

From Obama's talk of sending NASA rockets to Mars to a virtual red planet trip, Mars is getting tons of attention

While NASA budget-keepers focus on setting future priorities for the space agency, many in the world space community is trying to turn attention to the benefits a mostly complete International Space Station will provide global science.

While politicians banter about NASA’s budget and the future of manned space flight, the space agency is prepping the critical technology its remaining four space shuttle missions will deliver to complete the International Space Station.

NASA says it is narrowing a short list of things its scientists can to extricate its stuck Mars Spirit rover.

In the past few days there has been a burst of new photos and information from all manner of NASA's spacecraft and telescopes. The devices, ranging from the Hubble to Kepler the Spitzer telescopes, are delivering new information on everything from massive supergiant stars to new planets. Here we've gathered up some of them for a quick look.

As NASA celebrates its Mars rover Spirit’s sixth anniversary exploring the red planet it is hunting for a way to keep the machine, which is mired in a sand trap, alive to see a seventh year. On its Web site, the space agency this week noted there may indeed be such an option.

NASA is looking to reduce the deadly impact of helicopter crashes on their pilots and passengers with what the agency calls a high-tech honeycomb airbag known as a deployable energy absorber.

From the space shuttle and Mars mission to water on the moon and ice on the Earth, NASA has its hands in a variety of critical projects

Virgin Galactic has rolled out the very cool looking suborbital SpaceShipTwo spacecraft it expects will take thousands of space tourists on a rocket ride to near space.

Researchers at IBM say they have created smart software that that translates text between English and 11 other languages including Chinese, Korean, Japanese, French, Italian, Russian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Arabic.

As NASA’s space shuttle Atlantis astronauts blasted into space this afternoon, the last thing on their minds was wondering what’s for dinner.

NASA's long running Mars rover is stuck in a sand trap – a situation the space agency would like to fix. So NASA will begin what it called the long process of extricating Spirit by sending commands that could free the rover.

In the pantheon of controversial Microsoft comments CEO Steve Ballmer's recent quote about the Apple iPod: "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a US$500 subsidized item," ranks right up there. But Between Ballmer and Chairman Bill Gates that comment would be hard pressed to crack the Top 15 all-time most controversial or even colorful things the two of them have uttered in the past oh, 20 years or so. These are my favorite quotes, there are many like them but these are mine:

Employees who frequently telecommute may damage or kill their chances to advance within a particular career.

Security continues to dominate as IT's most pressing concern when it comes to supporting a large telecommuting workforce. But while security is a concern, teleworking, especially in the government realm, continues to grow at an impressive clip according to a study released by the CDW Government consultancy.