Astronaut Sally Ride became the first American woman in space on this day in history, June 18, 1983. Born on May 26, 1951, in Los Angeles, Ride earned bachelor's degrees in English and physics from Stanford University in California before staying at Stanford and earning a PhD in physics in 1978. Shortly before earning her doctorate, Ride saw an ad for a newspaper that piqued her interest. NASA was recruiting for astronauts -- and, for the first time, the agency would include women in its astronaut class. "Over 8,000 men and women applied to the space program that year. Of the 35 individuals accepted, six were women, and I was one of them. This was in January 1978," said Ride in quotes listed on a tribute page on NASA's website.

Travelling to Mars could affect the mind of the astronauts making the long journey - leaving them more likely to misidentify facial expressions, study warns. Current NASA plans could see the first humans step foot on the surface of the Red Planet by the end of the next decade as part of the Artemis mission. University of Pennsylvania researchers found that weightlessness leaves people more likely to see facial expressions as angry - rather than happy or neutral. The phenomenon could endanger missions to the Red Planet, warn scientists, as the astronauts will be weightless on a spaceship together for up to eight months. Studies have shown microgravity causes structural changes in the brain, but it's not fully understood how this translates to changes in behaviour.

The silver, three-wheeled RAVEN moon rover is the size of a golf cart, weighs 800 pounds, and is powered by two super-size car batteries. Its "brain" is the same kind of computer processor found in a netbook. Students in the Department of Aerospace Engineering's Space Systems Laboratory built the rover, which won a NASA design competition. As a smart, mobile assistant for astronauts, the rover and its robotic arm theoretically could follow instructions to bore holes into the moon's surface, collect rock samples and even carry an astronaut to safety in an emergency. Space systems lab students also designed a companion spacesuit to allow an astronaut to give the rover voice and keypad commands remotely.

Who should explore space, man or machine? The loss of seven space shuttle astronauts this month again brought home the serious risk that humans face into the hostile environs beyond our sheltered planet, reviving the question of whether exploring the heavens should be left to unmanned missions. Although less glamorous, such missions pose no risks to humans. And already robots have an impressive list of accomplishments compared to the their flesh and blood counterparts. "Unmanned missions are all about specifically targeted scientific explorations of the universe around us. Without exceptions, these efforts rise out of intense competition where the most compelling, and answerable, questions are posed," said Marc Buie, an astronomer at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Alexander Reben has created cute cardboard robots that elicit random emotional confessions from passersby, and a bot called The First Law that can decide whether or not to prick an unsuspecting human finger. These are two examples at the opposite ends of the spectrum of what artificial intelligence can one day bring to humanity - and for the artist, engineer and WIRED Innovation Fellow, they are important tools designed to spark debate about what that coexistence will look like. Take the First Law robot. It is named after the rules devised by sci-fi author Isaac Asimov, which state: "a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." But it is within our power to create a robot that does exactly the opposite.

A small drone taught itself to judge distances using only one eye during trials aboard the International Space Station, ESA-backed researchers have reported. Although humans can effortlessly estimate distances with a single eye, robots still lack this capability. "It is a mathematical impossibility to extract distances to objects from one single image, if the object has not been encountered before," explains Guido de Croon from Delft University of Technology, one of the investigators. "But if we recognise something to be a car, then we know its physical characteristics, and we can use that information to estimate its distance from us. A similar logic is what we wanted the drone to learn during our experiment."