The Ikaros, launched back on May 21st, is safely in orbit and today Japan's space agency reports that the craft's solar sails are fully extended. The Ikaros's claim to fame is that it'll use only the sun to propel itself and continuously generate power, making it an ideal candidate for deep space missions.

Bigelow Aerospace is looking to get in on this whole privatized space game with an ambitious plan. The company wants to have not one but two space stations in orbit by 2016, which will then serve as rental space for countries that can't afford such programs of their own. This is why private companies may be better than NASA in space: they aim to turn a profit.

A team at China's Southeast University in Nanjing have beat the Large Hadron Collider to creating a black hole. While it won't destroy the world (we hope), it acts in a similar fashion to a black hole, trapping all the electromagnetic waves that approach it and spiraling them inward.

You may have heard about Virgin Galactic and its recent test flight of SpaceShipTwo, the craft that'll soon be taking tourists into space to the tune of $200,000 a pop. But have you ever wondered just how far up the...