One thing we know is NASA knows how to launch a rocket. Now, the agency is upping its game by launching five rockets in five minutes to study the winds swirling in the atmosphere at the edge of space

Sixty carbon atoms arranged in a truncated icosahedron form a molecule of buckminsterfullerene. In other words, they make little itty bitty soccer balls, and the Spitzer space telescope has spotted these "buckyballs" floating around out in space. And not just one or two in gaseous form, but entire crates of them, stacked up together like oranges.

While the International Space Station provides a testing stage for orbital experiments, it's not the best launching point for, say, a manned deep space mission. Since that's exactly what NASA's looking to do in the near future, the agency is considering building another space station, one "parked" in an area where the Earth and moon's gravitation fields nearly cancel one another out.

Every year, NASA likes to remind us how the technology that it develops is good for far more than just sending stuff into space. One of the highlights of its 2011 technology spinoff report is a fire extinguisher that uses vortex combustion technology to put out fires faster and more efficiently than ever before.