Space has been much in the news lately, particularly with the death of astronaut Sally Ride. But how much do you really know about the “final (some would say “next) frontier?” Take this quiz and find out.

China, a country with over 4500 years of recorded history, gave the world, gunpowder, paper, compasses, movable type, and even the seismological detector. Now China has one more bullet point to its list of achievements: It’s the third country to have docked two spacecraft in orbit.

Criticizing the Space Shuttle is like punching America in the face. After all, it’s been a symbol of national pride for thirty years. But many of my friends and I are celebrating yesterday’s piggy-backed final flight of the Space Shuttle Discovery to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum…because a museum is where the shuttle belongs.

You read that right. NASA wants volunteers for their four-month simulation to Mars. But instead of conducting tests on confinement and psychological stress, NASA just want to study your tastebuds.

Are you a high school teacher of science, technology, engineering, or math? Do you like space? Do you know that, with the advent of private space companies, NASA won’t be the only way to get there? If so, there’s a workshop just for you…and 139 others just like you.

Space is a dirty place. Over 16,000 pieces of debris over 10 cm wide have been left behind since Sputnik took to the skies in 1957. And now the Swiss want to do something about it. Scientists with the Swiss Space Center at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, are developing a “janitor” satellite, known as CleanSpace One, to make space tidier.

When Richard Garriot de Cayeux, the founder of the Ultima series of computer games and the world’s sixth space tourist, went to the International Space Station ( ISS) in 2008, he didn’t just kick back and bask in zero gravity. No, during his twelve-day journey he conducted experiments on the crystallization of protein molecules, took photographs, conducted an art show (really) and…made a horror movie.

The Space Renaissance International (SRI) has held their inaugural congress live on Skype and included over 100 space development advocates from around the world.

What are you doing on April 11th? If you didn't say, "Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight to space," then you've answered WRONG.

The TED Conference lecture series includes anecdotes and stories from the movers and shakers of the world, such as Richard Branson and Benoit Mandelbrot, as well as other people with tales to tell. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, but TED has come to mean “ideas worth spreading.”