The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has awarded permission for the first commercial drone over land to BP, of all companies. The oil company's partner, drone manufacturer AeroVironment, flew its first commercial flight in Alaska on Sunday. And it didn't just send a dinky quadcopter to do the job either.

Using a pulsed laser beam from aboard its recently launched Lunar and Atmospheric Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), NASA has transmitted data over the 239,000 miles between the Moon and Earth at a record-breaking download rate of 622 megabits per second. Say goodbye to the glacial transmission speeds of RF…

Question: would you sign up for a one-way trip to Mars? Followup question for those who answered "No": what if you had an internet connection? Obviously, a lifetime on Mars would be a lot more enjoyable with a steady diet of cat videos. But would it be possible?

Al Jazeera just published an astonishing report on the after-effects of the BP oil disaster, and it's not pretty. There are an alarming number of deformities in sea creatures: mutated shrimp, fish with sores and lesions, eyeless crabs and more. It's unlike anything local fisherman have ever seen.

Donald Trump. Just a normal man with a normal ego. An ego so mild that he casually asked to be put in charge of BP repair operations. When he was turned down, he offered to build Obama a ballroom. Hoookay!

Fixing This | One year on, we take a look at the technologies used to combat the worst oil spill in US history

Exactly a year ago, the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank to the bottom of the ocean, beginning the slow underwater seep of 5 million barrels of oil. Today, the Gulf is better—but the disaster's damage remains.

Ah man, don't you hate those days where everything goes totally right except for when you, I dunno, step in a puddle? BP CEO Bob Dudley feels like that about BP in 2010, except his "puddle" was an environmental armageddon.

What to do with all those leftover oil booms that BP used to mop up its oil? If you're a car manufacturer, you could recycle all of the oil-slicked plastic tubes into new Chevrolet Volts.

The year is only just grinding to a halt, but Twitter's already released its list of the top subjects tweeted about in 2010. Of the 25 billion tweets published, BP's Gulf oil spill disaster was the most tweeted-about term.

Sometimes we all have to to own up to our mistakes and serve the time. But not the classy folks at BP! According to the NY Times, BP will challenge estimates of the oil spilled in order to reduce their fine.

Scientists have found dead and dying coral reefs 4,500 feet deep in the Gulf of Mexico. The dead coral means that oil from the BP oil spill is harming marine life in the deep ocean too.

Remember when BP was responsible for horrible things, and then they plugged the hole and we moved on to worrying about other horrible things? Things are still horrible! The chemical they used to break down oil is making people ill.

Halliburton and BP knew the cement mixture used to seal the Macondo well, the one drilled during the Deepwater Rig explosion, was unreliable but used it anyway, according a new report from the presidential commission investigating the disaster.

I love the series of photos of Anthony Burrill using oil from Louisiana beaches left from the BP oil disaster for his posters. From something so horrible comes something pretty eye-catching—and beneficial for the charity the profits support.

With BP closing its book on the oil spill disaster, we're left to repair the damage—and look at Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky's dramatic photos from the last few months, including the Q4000's oil flaring. [Burtynsky via DesignBoom]

After five months of investigations, soul-searching and naval-gazing, BP's released its report today summarizing exactly how a catastrophe such as their Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster could have occurred. And it's a doozy.