Space

Russian Scifi Epic “Inhabited Island” Comes to Berlin

The long-awaited Russian scifi film Inhabited Island will screen in Berlin this week. This $40 million dollar epic is one of the most expensive films to come out of the Motherland. It’s based on the 1971 Soviet novel called Prisoners of Power, written by the Strugatsky brothers, and follows amateur astronaut Maxim Kammerer after he…

io9 Kevin Kelly Feb 6

The Onion ‘Reports’ on Virgin Galactic, Gets it All Wrong

The Onion has finally gotten around to reporting on Virgin Galactic unveiling its new spaceship, and I’m pretty sure they got most of the facts wrong. Personally, I think The Onion could use a little bit more serious reporting. Will passengers really get “awesome robot sex” in space? I somehow doubt it, but if so…

Space & Spaceflight Adam Frucci Feb 4

Rhapsody of Steel (1959)

Many readers sent me a link to these great images from the ASIFA – Hollywood Animation Archive site. The images are from the children’s book adaptation of the 1959 industrial film, Rhapsody of Steel. While I haven’t yet found a copy of the film online, you can view the film at the Rivers of Steel…

Tech News Matt Novak Feb 1

Space Aliens First to Get DRM-Free Beatles Music?

Click to viewYou may have heard that at 7pm EST on Feb. 4, NASA plans to blast The Beatles’ song “Across the Universe” into deep space in order to serenade otherworldly beings hundreds, thousands or millions of light years away with our very best pop music. I have several problems with this. For starters, NASA:…

Space & Spaceflight Wilson Rothman Feb 1

Dead US Spy Satellite Hurtling Towards Earth; Where’s Your Car Parked?

A anonymous government official warned that a US intelligence satellite has lost power and could crash to earth sometime in February or March. When pushed on the matter, a National Security Council spokesman said this: “Appropriate government agencies are monitoring the situation. Numerous satellites over the years have come out of orbit and fallen harmlessly.…

Space & Spaceflight Wilson Rothman Jan 28

Virgin Galactic Unveils Spaceships That’ll Take Passengers Up in 2009

Good news for rich guys with spaceman fantasies: Virgin Galactic is on track to start launching commercial space flights in 2009, and they just announced their new spaceship designs. SpaceShipTwo is the spaceship that’ll actually go into space, while White Knight Two is the plane that’ll bring it up high enough to launch itself away.…

Space & Spaceflight Adam Frucci Jan 23

Japan to Send Peace Message from Space on a Paper Airplane

This week, researchers in the Tokyo area are testing an ultra-strong, heat-resistant paper airplane for space flight in a high-speed wind tunnel. The plane is shaped like a space shuttle and can endure Mach 7 winds. Since they don’t know exactly where on earth it will land upon execution, they’re going to write a universal…

io9 LISA KATAYAMA Jan 18

Become A 700-Year-Old Trash Robot

You can visit the desolate world of Wall-E, this summer’s animated movie about a trash-compacting robot, in an upcoming xBox game. Judging from these early screen shots, it looks like the Wall-E game may do too good a job of capturing the robot’s loneliness and the toll of time on his robotic circuits. You’ll be…

io9 Kevin Kelly Jan 14

Refugees from the Halo Wars

The massive juggernaut of gaming that is the Halo trilogy has a strategy game prequel coming out this year, and while there hasn’t been much news about it since last summer’s E3, the developers have quietly been putting up new concept art over the past few months. This newest piece shows what seems to be…

io9 Kevin Kelly Jan 14

Kevin Smith’s ‘Ranger Danger and the Danger Rangers’

Kevin Smith is admittedly a fan of science fiction (io9 spied him at the William S. Paley Festival’s Battlestar Galactica event in Beverly Hills), and his love for Star Wars and comic books is pretty well-documented. However, other than his Flying Car short film, he hasn’t directed anything down that road. Once his film load…

io9 Kevin Kelly Jan 10

Crucial Super-Ginormous Black Hole Update

A team of Finnish scientists have measured the biggest black hole ever. Actually, it’s a binary black hole system that powers a nearby quasar, and is 18 billion times more massive than Sol (our local star). [BBC News]

io9 Annalee Newitz Jan 10

An Antimatter Ship for Every Space Dock

Earlier today, we celebrated the discovery that antimatter can be found everywhere — not just the center of the galaxy. Now we’ll take you deep inside the strange world of antimatter-powered spaceships. Believe it or not, there’s actually an entire lab devoted to antimatter space propulsion at Penn State (the image you see here is…

io9 Annalee Newitz Jan 9

Antimatter Discovered Close to Earth

When electrons and positrons collide, you’ve got antimatter. Previously, astrophysicists believed that this particle slam-dance could only happen in the hot, energetic heart of a galaxy. But now a new article in the latest issue of Nature reveals that antimatter is being brewed up everywhere around us — at least, everywhere with a binary star…

io9 Annalee Newitz Jan 9

Buck Rogers In The Disco Century

Buck certainly knows how to strut his stuff and get down with it. We’ve already seen the phenomenon that is the disco-dancing Buckettes on skates, but what about Buck himself showing folks the intergalactic funky chicken? It’s great how the DJ just sort of gets the gist of what Buck is explaining to him through…

io9 Kevin Kelly Jan 8

Sunshine Should Be Burning Up the Oscars

The Academy’s shortlist for visual effects awards hit the web yesterday, and Sunshine isn’t anywhere to be found. If you want to see why this is such a travesty, then head out and pick up a copy on DVD today. We know all of you didn’t see it, and it flew under the radar for…

io9 Kevin Kelly Jan 8

Tips on Organizing Your Room from the Zvezda Space Habitat

If you’ve ever lived in a dorm or a small apartment, you know how hard it can be to cram in all your computers, books, and general stuff while still staying organized. This problem has reached epic engineering proportions in the International Space Station’s “living quarters” on the the Zvezda Module. Three people use the…

io9 Annalee Newitz Jan 7

New Worlds To Radically Alter (1981)

The 1981 book Out into Space (World of Tomorrow) by Neil Ardley features this image of Venus, “bombarded with containers of plants that will begin to change its atmosphere into oxygen, which people can breathe.” An excerpt from the children’s book appears below. Plans have been proposed to change Mars and Venus, the nearest planets,…

Tech News Matt Novak Jan 4

Bad Science Looks Killer In “Sunshine”

We can’t wait for Danny Boyle’s Sunshine to come out on DVD next Tuesday. Sunshine might have been the best SF movie of 2007, even though its science was iffy in places. Take this cool-looking scene, where hapless communications officer Harvey tries to jump from one spaceship to another without a suit and doesn’t quite…

io9 Charliejane Jan 3

Dancing in Zero Gravity to New Age Music Will Help Us Evolve

Today a 727 “Vomit Comet” lifted off from Las Vegas in order to film a scene of a woman dancing in zero gravity for an upcoming science fiction film called Stardance. Filmmaker Jeanne Robinson (choreographer and wife of scifi writer Spider Robinson) won the trip after showing this astonishingly bad preview video at the Heinlein…

io9 Kevin Kelly Dec 31

Rocket Porn Sexes Up The Space Shuttle

Why is there a rocket racing ahead of the space shuttle in this 1971 Tang ad? Maybe it’s because the sleek-but-functional space shuttle concept art just doesn’t look scifi enough on its own. Or maybe this is a symbolic baton-passing from the Apollo missions to the coming shuttle era. Either way, the space shuttle didn’t…

io9 Charliejane Dec 31

Russian Scifi Epic “Inhabited Island” Comes to Berlin

The Onion ‘Reports’ on Virgin Galactic, Gets it All Wrong

Rhapsody of Steel (1959)

Space Aliens First to Get DRM-Free Beatles Music?

Dead US Spy Satellite Hurtling Towards Earth; Where’s Your Car Parked?

Virgin Galactic Unveils Spaceships That’ll Take Passengers Up in 2009

Japan to Send Peace Message from Space on a Paper Airplane

Become A 700-Year-Old Trash Robot

Refugees from the Halo Wars

Kevin Smith’s ‘Ranger Danger and the Danger Rangers’

Crucial Super-Ginormous Black Hole Update

An Antimatter Ship for Every Space Dock

Antimatter Discovered Close to Earth

Buck Rogers In The Disco Century

Sunshine Should Be Burning Up the Oscars

Tips on Organizing Your Room from the Zvezda Space Habitat

New Worlds To Radically Alter (1981)

Bad Science Looks Killer In “Sunshine”

Dancing in Zero Gravity to New Age Music Will Help Us Evolve

Rocket Porn Sexes Up The Space Shuttle

The Live-Action ‘One Piece’ Team Wants to Go the Distance

‘Lee Cronin’s The Mummy’ Will Please Gross Horror Fans

Somehow Paramount’s ‘Avatar’ Movie Has Leaked, Too

The World Is Basically Begging for Another iPod

Anker’s EufyMake E1 Finally Brings Printers Out of the Dark Ages

OpenAI Says Elon Musk Is ‘Injecting Chaos’ with Recent Legal Maneuver

Google Displayed Polymarket Bets as News ‘In Error,’ Google Says

‘Marvel Rivals’ Wants to Start Being More Than Just a Hero Shooter

This Loud-Ass Party Speaker Almost Got Me High AF

Asus Zenbook A16 Review: Start Considering Snapdragon on PC, for Real

Aqara Thermostat Hub W200 Review: Almost Better than My Ecobee

HP Omen Max 45L Review: 4K60 Gaming Has Never Been So Easy

Ecovacs Winbot W3 Omni Review: Window Cleaning Robots Have a Long Way to Go

AirPods Max 2 vs. Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (2nd Gen): Which ANC Headphones Win?

The Best Gadgets of March 2026

AirPods Max 2 Review: Still Ridiculously Expensive and Ridiculously Nice

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