A dwarf planet in our own solar system might once have supported life, scientists have said. Ceres, a mysterious rocky planet in the asteroid belt between Mars ad Jupiter, has a rich body of ice beneath its dark surface, according to scientists. The discoveries were reported in a pair of studies published in the journals Science and Nature Astronomy. The scientists behind them hope that they could help commercial endeavours to mine water and other resources from asteroids, and to send humans out beyond the moon. The image was taken by Nasa's HiRISE camera, which is mounted on its Mars Reconaissance Orbiter 3/30 Orion Capsule splashes down The Orion capsule jetted off into space before heading back a few hours later -- having proved that it can be used, one day, to carry humans to Mars 4/30 The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launch The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, carrying three new astronauts to the International Space Station.

While the US Navy's new state-of-the-art USS Zumwalt destroyer struggles to remain functional, the service branch's R&D department has been busy investigating cutting-edge tech at a much smaller scale. Back in October, the Office of Naval Research (OCR) demonstrated the harbor defense capabilities of a group of prototype small autonomous boats, aka "swarmbots," in Chesapeake Bay. The ONR used four rigid hull inflatable boats (RHIB) -- think of the larger soldier-ferrying Zodiacs -- to show off the drone squad's ability to patrol, investigate approaching unknown crafts and relay that information back to a human supervisor. Using autonomous vehicles for dull yet important tasks such as harbor defense is cheaper than using human crews, especially since some of the drone tech used in the demo is off-the-shelf. The ONR's autonomous system, Control Architecture for Robotic Agent Command and Sensing (CARACaS), was first demonstrated in RHIBs back in 2014, according to the department's press release.

Say hello to SUPERSIZE Tinder! Dating app launches on Apple... Shipwreck of the lost Schiedam is found AGAIN: Divers... Snapchat unveils a group messaging feature that lets up to... Get ready to'Waymo' a self-driving cab: Google creates new... Say hello to SUPERSIZE Tinder! Dating app launches on Apple... Shipwreck of the lost Schiedam is found AGAIN: Divers... Snapchat unveils a group messaging feature that lets up to... Get ready to'Waymo' a self-driving cab: Google creates new... Valley Stream Best Buy associates gift a teen with a Wii U Watch woman get dragged off jet by police in Detroit Syria: Footage emerges of Russian special forces'fighting ISIS' Trash is dumped on woman's door step after she fails to pay Horrifying moment woman is kicked down the stairs by stranger Documentary director attacked by gang of immigrants in Stockholm'I'm going to wing walk!' Schofield talks to Duke about wing walk'Scumbag unions': Chants outside Brighton rail station Hunters forced to shoot a wild bear dead as it charges towards them Lads post the rudest mannequin challenge from "Scottish party" Impressive fireball lights up Spain's Costa del Sol night sky'We talked about life': Trump and Kanye discuss surprise meet Syria: Footage emerges of Russian special forces'fighting ISIS' Trash is dumped on woman's door step after she fails to pay'We talked about life': Trump and Kanye discuss surprise meet Kanye West-wing: The Donald embraces his troubled'friend'... Democrats' all-out bid to smear Trump's victory as Clinton... It's not'he' and'she'. It's'ze': Oxford University union... Terminally-ill boy, five, dies in Santa Claus' arms after... EXCLUSIVE: Angelina demands Brad Pitt be drug tested four... Trump's Iran stance could threaten a WORLD WAR and the... Shocking moment a woman was physically dragged off a Delta... Bride paralyzed at her bachelorette party opens up about sex... Best Buy employees in Long Island chip in to buy a $300 WiiU... Woman left with huge bill after Plenty of Fish date eats... Prince Harry and girlfriend Meghan Markle are'spotted... The Laughing Cavalier was a true gent and the two figures... Kanye West-wing: The Donald embraces his troubled'friend'... Terminally-ill boy, five, dies in Santa Claus' arms after... EXCLUSIVE: Angelina demands Brad Pitt be drug tested four... Trump's Iran stance could threaten a WORLD WAR and the... Shocking moment a woman was physically dragged off a Delta... Bride paralyzed at her bachelorette party opens up about sex... Best Buy employees in Long Island chip in to buy a $300 WiiU... Woman left with huge bill after Plenty of Fish date eats... Prince Harry and girlfriend Meghan Markle are'spotted...

An Atlas V rocket launched with NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 7:05 p.m. NASA video. SpaceX launched JCSAT-16 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and landed the first stage on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. United Launch Alliance launched a Delta IV rocket at 12:52 a.m. from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Thursday, July 28, 2016 with a secret payload for the National Reconnaissance Office. SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral and landed it about eight minutes later.

It had always been Katherine Goble's great talent to be in the right place at the right time. In August 1952, 12 years after leaving graduate school to have her first child, that right place was in Marion, Virginia, at the wedding of her husband, Jimmy Goble's, little sister Patricia. Pat, a vivacious college beauty queen just two months graduated from Virginia State College, was marrying her college sweetheart, a young army corporal named Walter Kane. Jimmy's other sister and brother-in-law, Margaret and Eric Epps, had journeyed from Newport News, and the newlyweds planned to accompany the Eppses back to the coast, hitching a ride to their honeymoon at Hampton's segregated Bay Shore Beach resort. "Why don't y'all come home with us too?" Eric asked Katherine. "I can get Snook a job at the shipyard," he said, using Jimmy's family nickname. "In fact, I can get both of you jobs." There's a government facility in Hampton that's hiring black women, Eric told Katherine, and they're looking for mathematicians. It's a civilian job, he told her, but attached to Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory--the oldest outpost of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or NACA. Katherine listened intently as her brother-in-law described the work, her thumb cradling her chin, her index finger extended along her cheek, the signal that she was listening carefully. She and Jimmy made a living as public school teachers, but their paychecks were modest. The needs of their three growing daughters seemed greater by the day, and the couple could only just cover their basics and squeeze out a little extra for piano lessons or Girl Scouts. Deft with a sewing machine, Katherine bought fabric from the dry goods store and stayed up nights making school outfits for the girls and dresses for herself.

A recent McKinsey study suggests that 45 percent of on-the-job activities can be automated by deploying artificial intelligence. That includes file clerks, whose jobs can become 80 percent automated, or CEOs' jobs that can be 20 percent automated because AI systems radically simplify and target CEOs' reading of reports, risk detection or pattern recognition. There is understandable consternation about the unbridled power that machines may have over human decision-making. Elon Musk has called AI "our biggest existential threat." On the other side are enthusiasts eager for smart machines to improve our lives and the planet's health.

The experiment with having a robot in my home was going well – useful exchanges, mutual learning, some bonding – right up until the robot thought I told it to "fuck off". But the robot was convinced. It flashed its blue light and scolded me in a tone mixing hurt, disappointment and reprimand: "That's not very nice to say." Or bristled, saying it had erred and should pay more attention before leaping to conclusions. I could have unplugged the thing. Instead, worried at hurt feelings and a vague possibility of retribution, I apologised.

Maria and Bob Hickerson saw their first lionfish on a diving trip in Jamaica in 2009. When they spotted it, they hurried over before this unfamiliar specimen could swim away. But instead, the fish seemed to pause. They took photos and told the dive operator about the fish. He asked for details about where they spotted it.

Europe's Schiaparelli Mars lander crashed last month after a sensor failure caused it to cast away its parachute and turn off braking thrusters more than two miles (3.7 km) above the surface of the planet, as if it had already landed, a new report has revealed. The error stemmed from a momentary glitch in a device that measured how fast the spacecraft was spinning, the report by the European Space Agency said. The spacecraft activated its ground systems, even though it was still about 2.3 miles off the surface, the ESA said. The new image of Schiaparelli and its hardware components was taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO, on 1 November. A number of the bright white spots around the dark region interpreted as the impact site are now confirmed as real objects – they are not likely to be imaging'noise' – and therefore are most likely fragments of Schiaparelli.

Peter Drucker was prescient about most things, but the computer wasn't one of them. "The computer ... is a moron," the management guru asserted in a McKinsey Quarterly article in 1967, calling the devices that now power our economy and our daily lives "the dumbest tool we have ever had." Drucker was hardly alone in underestimating the unfathomable pace of change in digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI). AI builds on the computational power of vast neural networks sifting through massive digital data sets or "big data" to achieve outcomes analogous, often superior, to those produced by human learning and decision-making. Careers as varied as advertising, financial services, medicine, journalism, agriculture, national defense, environmental sciences, and the creative arts are being transformed by AI.