With the Shuttle fueled and up and about, NASA have again published an interesting diatribe on why this is important. Well, actually, yes, it is important. We need to know how to cook pasta in space.

Months after getting stuck in the Martian dirt, a NASA rover has stopped communicating with its controllers here on Earth.

The space agency said late yesterday that its Mars Exploration Rover Spirit did not make a communication session that had been scheduled for Tuesday. Scientists expect that the robotic machine has entered into a low-power hibernation mode, where most functions are ended to conserve valuable, and dwindling, energy. MORE

It’s true! NASA’s space shuttle is controlled by a computer running on only one megabyte of RAM. How is this possible? Since the space shuttle and all its hardware is over 30 years old, so is its computer. The current computer is actually an upgraded version of the 500-kilobyte computer that was used until 1991, but still based on the same outdated technology from the 1980s.

From DailyCamera