Like everything they build, engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) designed Curiosity's Sky Crane landing system to work. But nothing is guaranteed in spaceflight. The team wouldn't know for sure whether the mission's entry, descent, and landing (or EDL) was successful until they got confirmation from the rover. The problem was that Curiosity's landing site in Gale Crater would be out of range at touchdown, so the team brought in a communications relay: the Mars Odyssey orbiter. It was a simple and obvious solution, except that Odyssey experienced its first ever malfunctions weeks before Curiosity's landing.

Believe it or not, Bruce Willis had sort of the right idea in Armageddon: the most effective way to nuke an asteroid that's threatening Earth is to detonate the weapon deep inside the rock as opposed to on the surface. There may be a Willis/Affleck-free way to make this happen, by using an artificial asteroid of our own.

The WISE space-based infrared survey telescope has completed two surveys of the sky in the infrared, revealing millions of new supermassive (and ravenous) black holes called quasars. And we weren't exactly looking for Hot DOGs out there, but we found a bunch of 'em anyway.

Designing the perfect aircraft is impossible. For takeoff and landing (arguably the most important parts of flying), you want something with wide, broad wings. But to fly fast and efficiently, you want wings that are swept back and as small as possible. Variable sweep wings are a compromise, but this concept (just funded by NASA) proposes something, um, different.