That would be one way for one spacecraft to manipulate another. However, being able to do that without touching the target would be really valuable - even if it's only from a short distance away. For one thing, the target spacecraft would not need to have any hold points suitable for your grappling hook - it could be…

The forces demonstrated in that video are too large for air currents to explain. I could demonstrate that by waving a card or a fan around instead of a magnet - perhaps not doing so was my mistake!

Then this effect wouldn't work as well! I would need the spacecraft skin to be a conductor. Fortunately, lots of spacecraft have aluminum skins.

You're right, the forces at a larger separation distance are very small. However, I've done some simulations that get up to ion-engine-scale forces using current spacecraft bus power requirements. Working in favor of the effect here is that disturbance and dissipative forces in space are very small, so very small…

I suppose you will have to take my word for it - it is. The whole FloatCube is made out of aluminum.

@GizmoTron9000: This video offers one perspective: you can make the world better by either "decreasing the suck" or "increasing the awesome." NASA, as it happens, does both. Sure, the agency isn't focusing explicitly on curing cancer or solving world hunger, but its activities definitely do make the world a better…

This is only true if you want the latest and greatest. But if you're interested in saving money, a better strategy would be to wait until the next release and then buy the previous model, no? Even the last-generation smartphones and tablets and such are stuffed with computing power and easily do everything that the…

@texasbrownie.com: +1000

@ant1pathy: That's exactly the biggest factor adding risk to a system like this one. And you're right, some spacecraft use tantalum boxes around their electronics for shielding. The problem you run into, though, is the same one you have with adding any components (particularly solid chunks of metal) to a spacecraft:…

@tjb5083: Yeah, it may not last long. The question is, how much do we care? Even a 2-month lifetime would be good for some low-cost, rapid-response Earth observation missions. I'm very curious as to how this vehicle fares!

@Hearthatvoiceagain says Get well soon Steve.: If you're below the altitude of the GPS constellation, you can definitely use GPS for satellite positioning. But even above that altitude, it's possible to use sideband transmissions from the GPS satellites - the bits of GPS signal that miss the Earth - to determine your…

Pathological monsters...!

@BeyondtheTech: BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHWM

This just goes to show:

@verditsgerman: I think the raptors look much more fearsome with feathers.

@Aaron Crabtree: Well said.

@ninjagin: Yep. Who wants to spend billions and billions of dollars on Constellation when we could just buy these and let NASA build dedicated spacecraft?

Pffsshht. That gravity isn't obeying the proper inverse-square law.

@metronome49: This bacterium was manipulated in a lab environment such that it started incorporating arsenic into its DNA in place of phosphorous, which is in the same column of the periodic table so it can have some similar chemical behaviors. The structure and function of the DNA didn't change.

While I'm glad Gizmodo didn't get as ridiculous about this as some boggers out there - speculating from the press release a few days ago that NASA had *discovered* alien life - the writing in this article is still rather hyperbolic.