|  High-Tech Santa: 5 Devices to Give Old St. Nick a Boost Every year, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) tracks Santa Claus' location on Christmas Eve, to the delight of millions who visit the military's website that night. After all, Santa isn't getting any younger, and Christmas Eve isn't getting any longer. So what should be on Santa's wish list this year to help him guide his sleigh from the North Pole and get presents to all the good girls and boys of the world? Read More » Say Aahhh! Shark Photographed with Huge Mouth Open  | Here's an image no swimmer would want to see in real life: a massive tiger shark with its jaws open, as if ready to devour an observer. Though the picture makes it look like the photographer was the shark's next meal, no one was ever in danger, said David Shiffman, a doctoral candidate in marine biology at the University of Miami's Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy, who posted the photo on Twitter (but was not on the boat at the time the photo was taken). Several weeks ago, Shiffman's colleagues captured a tiger shark off the coast of Florida and brought the animal onto the semi-submerged platform behind their boat, with water still buoying the shark's body. "The shark's mouth was open enough to take that quick shot," Shiffman told LiveScience.
| Read More » Robots of the Future: Q&A With DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar  | The two-day DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials began Friday (Dec. 20) here at the Homestead Miami Speedway. Seventeen teams qualified for the contest, and the highest-scoring groups will move on to the DARPA Robotics Finals next year. As robots battled through each phase of the Trials, LiveScience sat down with DARPA director Arati Prabhakar to talk about the competition, the future of robotics, and how robots relate to national defense. LiveScience: What are DARPA's goals for the outcome of the Robotics Challenge?
| Read More » Private Mars Lander Launching in 2018 Will Build on NASA Legacy  | WASHINGTON — Mars One is gearing up to send an unmanned lander to the Red Planet that would follow in the mold of NASA's successful Mars landers. The Netherlands-based nonprofit has sealed a deal with security and aerospace company Lockheed Martin to develop a mission concept for its lander. This surface craft is slated to launch toward the Red Planet along with a communications satellite in 2018 — six years before Mars One aims to blast four people toward the Red Planet on a one-way colonization mission. Based on NASA's Phoenix lander, Mars One's lander will include new thin-film solar cells, a water extraction experiment, and other demonstration technologies that will be required for human settlement on Mars.
| Read More » Huge Asteroid Vesta Shines in Dazzling New Light (Images)  | The subdued, gray-hued photos of the enormous asteroid Vesta captured by NASA's Dawn spacecraft last year have received an overhaul. "The key to these images is the seven color filters of the camera," Andreas Nathues, framing camera lead at Max Planck, said in a statement. Launched in 2007, the $466 million Dawn mission visited Vesta from July 2011 to September 2012. Upon departing Vesta, the probe began its journey to another denizen of the asteroid belt, the dwarf planet Ceres.
| Read More » Greenland's Snow Hides 100 Billion Tons of Water  | Big surprises still hide beneath the frozen surface of snowy Greenland. "We thought we had an understanding of how things work in Greenland, but here is this entire storage system of water we didn't realize was there," said Richard Forster, lead study author and a glaciologist at the University of Utah. The discovery will help scientists better understand the fate of Greenland's annual surface melt, which contributes to sea level rise.
| Read More » What?! The 10 Weirdest Animal Stories of 2013  | The past year had its share of bizarre animal discoveries, from butterflies that feast on the tears of turtles to a two-headed shark fetus. To put that in perspective: If the rock-climbing goby were human, the equivalent would be running a marathon vertically, against running water, Clemson University biomechanist Richard Blob told LiveScience.
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