Warp drive, a staple of science-fiction, has just been deemed "plausible and worth further investigation" by the smart and apparently not crazy people over at NASA. And by way of further investigation, they've gone and started trying to create warp bubbles in the lab.

If you love space, and you love getting behind the scenes access then, the AsteroidMappers project is perfect for you. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's spacecraft Dawn recently finished its orbit of the asteroid Vesta, and has delivered so much data that citizen scientists are being asked to help analyze what has been found.

35 years ago, the Voyager 1 spacecraft was launched from Earth and ventured out into the galaxy. It's the farthest man-made object from home, at over 11 billion miles from us. Voyager's mission is to just keep on heading out into the final frontier (at least until it's picked up and brought back in time for Star Trek: The Motion Picture in the mid-2270s), and it's currently in the process of exiting our solar system and entering intergalactic space. On its way out of the solar system, Voyager 1 passed Jupiter and Saturn, sending back spectacular high resolution pictures of the gas giants and their moons. In the gallery below, we've chosen some of our favorite pictures from Voyager's tour, along with a few snapshots of the spacecraft itself before it left Earth.

As far as humans are concerned, the most important part of a spaceship isn't the turbodrive or the turbolifts or even the turbolasers. No, it's the life support system, the thing that keeps us from, you know, dying. These systems are generally bulky and complex, but a new concept from NASA would weave them directly into spaceship hulls instead.