Remember Space Exploration Technologies Corp, otherwise known as SpaceX? You know, the private space transport company started by PayPal founder Elon Musk that won the NASA Commercial Commercial Orbital Transportation Services competition for its Falcon rocket? Last we heard from SpaceX it had lost Falcon 1 during a test launch, but this week its Falcon 9 launch vehicle was successfully fired up. While it didn't go anywhere, the successful static launch was good news for the company, and the test run was even two months ahead of schedule, which could mean good things for the rockets' ultimate place in runs to the International Space Station once the Space Shuttle goes out of service in 2010.

It's been a great week for space geeks, what with the Phoenix Lander doing its Mars sniffing and toilet drama at the space station. Meanwhile, over in Europe, EADS Astrium Space Transportation is showing off a manned version of its Automated Transfer Vehicle (also known as the Jules Verne). This space vehicle has already been used to bring equipment to the International Space Station, but new designs reveal that Germany, France, and Italy are on board to retrofit the vehicle with seats and touch screens for humans. There's just one little problem -- the Jules Verne can't return non-humans (let alone humans) to Earth safely yet. Astrium is hoping to get the stage flying by 2013 on top of the Ariane 5 rocket in time for the end of the American Space Shuttle program in 2010, when it would replace it as the largest-payload space transport.

Although it's been several years since the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, it looks like some of the data gathered during the orbiter's final mission will be put to good use. A hard drive salvaged from the wreckage contains the results of an experiment to study the way xenon gas flows in microgravity, and the results were published in the April edition of a journal called Physical Review E. The 400MB Seagate drive was originally thought to be destroyed, but workers and engineers reconstructing the orbiter from the remaining debris found it during the process and sent it off for recovery, where 99 percent of the data was extracted. It then took several years for lead researcher Robert Berg and his team to analyze the findings, but they're happy with the results -- we only wish they hadn't come at so dear a price.

[Thanks, Laura]

Oh sure, iPods have found their way outside of our atmosphere before, but there's just something magical about spotting one front and (off) center on the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Dollars to donuts it's perpetually repeating the discography of Air.

As NASA awaits the newly rescheduled launch of its latest mission, Microsoft has been busy creating a "3D montage" of the space shuttle Endeavour. According to the team, this venture will enable individuals around the globe to "view 3D images of Endeavour and surrounding buildings at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida before it launches into space." The environments are being constructed using hundreds of snapshots and an imaging technology dubbed Photosynth, which stitches together 2D digital images to give a three-dimensional view "that can be navigated and explored in a highly intuitive manner." This go 'round, it seems that the goal was simply to provide a wow-factor to remote onlookers, but both entities are reportedly "looking into ways of using this new technology to support future missions." Check out the results here.

[Via PCWorld]

As if the folks at Top Gear didn't already have the best job in the world, they recently went and completely outdid themselves, building their own Space Shuttle out of a Reliant Robin, roughly the British equivalent of a Pinto or a Gremlin (minus a wheel). As you can see, it all came together quite nicely, complete with an external fuel tank, solid rocket boosters, and a spot-on paint job, although there doesn't seem to have been any room left for passengers, with the whole lot remotely-controlled instead. That proved to have been for the best, however, with the impressive launch followed by a less-than-successful landing, though that was still more than enough to claim the title of the largest rocket flown in the U.K. While it's unclear if they'll ever have another go at it, you can check out the complete rise and fall of this attempt in the video after the break.

[Via Tech E Blog, thanks Grant B]