Blue Origin's reusable rocket makes third successful vertical landing

American space firm Blue Origin successfully completed the third launch and vertical landing of its reusable New Shepard rocket on Saturday, company founder and internet entrepreneur Jeff Bezos said.

"Flawless BE-3 restart and perfect booster landing," tweeted Bezos, referring to the BE-3 engine used to land the rocket back at the company's testing site in Texas.

The unmanned crew capsule also landed safely, using parachutes, said the executive, who founded online giant Amazon and also owns The Washington Post newspaper.

The breakthroughs by Blue Origin and parallel efforts by rival Internet mogul Elon Musk's SpaceX open up the potential for cutting costs for space travel and making rockets as reusable as airplanes.

In November, Bezos called the accomplishment a "game-changer" which opens the door to lower costs in space travel and his vision of people living and working in space.

Bezos said in a tweet on Friday that the rocket's engines would be restarting just 3,600 feet (1.1 kilometers) from the ground during the vertical landing attempt on Saturday, with the rocket hitting the ground in six seconds if they failed to work properly.

The New Shepard can reach an altitude of 333,000 feet, considered the boundary between Earth's atmosphere and space.

Previous test flights for the New Shepard were in January and November.

Flexible Camera Developed That Can Be Wrapped Around Objects

A team led by an Indian-origin professor at Columbia University has created a novel sheet camera that can be wrapped around everyday objects to capture images that cannot be taken with one or more conventional cameras. "Cameras today capture the world from essentially a single point in space. While the camera industry has made remarkable progress in shrinking the camera to a tiny device with ever increasing imaging quality, we are exploring a radically different approach to imaging," said Shree K Nayar, computer science professor at Columbia University. "We believe there are numerous applications for cameras that are large in format but very thin and highly flexible," added Nayar who graduated from the Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi, in 1984. Nayar's team designed and fabricated a flexible lens array that adapts its optical properties when the sheet camera is bent. This optical adaptation enables the device to produce high quality images over a wide ...

Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo back Apple in its fight over encryption with FBI

The nation's leading tech companies joined security experts, independent programmers and civil liberties advocates who filed court papers backing Apple in its fight with the FBI over an encrypted iPhone used by an extremist killer. Several law enforcement groups, meanwhile, filed briefs in support of federal authorities who are seeking Apple's help in hacking an encrypted iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of the San Bernardino mass shooters. These "friend of the court" briefs come in advance of a March 22 hearing in which Apple is asking U.S. Magistrate Sheri Pym to reverse an order requiring Apple to create a software program that overrides iPhone security features. That program would let authorities try to unlock Farook's phone by guessing its passcode; Apple says it would make all other iPhones more vulnerable to future attacks. Relatives of five people who were killed, along with one survivor of the December 2 attack, also filed a brief saying the FBI's ...

Samsung Galaxy S7: 5 Features That Stand Out

Klutzes of the world should rejoice Friday, as Samsung officially starts sales of its new water-resistant Samsung Galaxy S7 and Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge. The phones, which the company first unveiled last month, are now widely available in all their dunkable glory. The latest two Samsung's high-end smartphones are supposed to be able to withstand submersion up to five feet for as long as 30 minutes. So you're in luck if you drop your phone in the drink - as long as you fish it out reasonably fast. Samsung provided me with a review unit of the Galaxy S7, a 5.1-inch smartphone. Once I opened the box, I duly dropped the high-performance, expensive phone into my sink while doing the dishes. Apart from the mild palpitations I gave myself, there was no damage at all. The phone's touchscreen didn't work under water, but it continued on without a hiccup and was unharmed and still working perfectly when I pulled it out. It was just as impressively zippy as ever and no worse for ...

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