news.buyenne.com

A proposed helicopter could triple the distances that Mars rovers can drive in a Martian day. (credit: NASA)

Imagine a tissue-box sized device, with blades a few feet long, whirring to life after charging for a full Sol on Mars. It then flies ahead of a rover to search for hazards and targets of interest. Deeper in the solar system, on Europa, a large spacecraft lands near a fissure and drops small probes into the ocean far below. Beyond the Moon, a telescope with a specially fitted shade images an Earth-like exoplanet for the first time, possibly finding chemical markers of life. Finally, in a few decades, powered by hitherto undreamed-of propulsion, a spacecraft takes off for Alpha Centauri at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

It all sounds like science fiction, but a new budget for NASA proposed by the US House of Representatives includes seed money for all of these initiatives, some of which are receiving funding for the first time. The budget must still be reconciled with that of the Senate, but the House and Senate committees have worked well in the past to finalize NASA’s funding. Most of these concepts should therefore survive.

Ars caught up with the author of this budget Monday evening, John Culberson, a Texas Republican who represents one of the most conservative districts in the conservative state of Texas. He’s a proud member of the Tea Party and would like nothing more than to tear up Obamacare. But Culberson is also a science geek through and through, and while he’d like to cut the federal budget, he’d just as soon plough those savings into NASA to fuel new innovations.

(credit: Pebble)

As the wearable space becomes increasingly crowded, Pebble is holding strong amid stiff competition. Companies like Fitbit and Garmin are trying to turn fitness trackers into all-purpose smartwatches, but Pebble's CEO Eric Migicovsky is making sure that Pebble does "a couple things really really well." That's the premise behind Pebble's newest and most unique device, the Pebble Core smart running module. It's a tiny computer that tracks running and can sync with your Spotify account so you really don't have to take your phone with you on a workout anymore.

Run free

The Core is Pebble's first non-smartwatch product. It's a small square with rounded edges and two circular indents on its front. The larger is the main button for starting and stopping tracking, and the smaller one in the corner, in true Pebble fashion, can be hacked to perform a number of features. You could program it to send an emergency text to someone when you leave your phone at home, call an Uber when you find yourself in a pinch, or a number of other things. On the top side of the core is a hold slider and a headphone jack, and the device is Bluetooth ready so you can connect wired or wireless headphones to it.

Aside from Bluetooth, the Core is Wi-Fi ready, and it has a 3G modem, 4GB of storage, and a GPS to map runs. Migicovsky describes it as a "tiny computer running Android 5.0," so it could end up being much more than a clip-on running monitor. Migicovsky went so far as to say that you might be able to use the Core's smaller button to open your garage door or even find your keys if you leave the device attached to a key ring. Pebble's history of making its devices open to the developer community makes a device like the Core quite appealing since its small size lets it take on many functions depending on the features people develop for it.

Abigail Bassett

This is the McLaren 570S—the "baby" of the range, if you can describe a 562hp supercar in those terms.

7 more images in gallery

I sent my mom a photo of the grey, alien-looking sports car hunkered low in my driveway.

"What is THAT?" She typed back.

"McLaren 570S," I thumbed at the screen, followed by an elaborate string of emoticons