NASA’s Project M, an awesome concept to use vertical launch systems to send robonauts to the moon, is still moving forward despite Robonaut’s one-way trip to the International Space Station. It’s now called Project Morpheus, and it’s a test bed for autonomous, environmentally friendly vertical launch systems. Watch below as Morpheus fires its new engine for the first time.

The spacecraft is capable of carrying 1,100 pounds of cargo to the moon, possibly a robonaut, a rover or a moon-dust lab, according to its designers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. And it can do it all autonomously.

The best part is its propulsion system, which is fueled by methane and liquid oxygen. Methane is a waste gas on the ISS and could also conceivably be harvested from ice in lunar craters or at the Martian poles. So it would be cheap to fill up small launchers like Morpheus for sample-return trips, something this country has never done before. It could be configured to land on an asteroid, too.

Engineers at Armadillo Aerospace, which aims to send up its own vertical takeoff rockets, built the prototype according to NASA designs. The team tried out its new engine for the first time Monday, with Morpheus tethered to a tower so it couldn’t take off on its own. This is the fifth “hot fire” test, but the first with this engine.

In the face of painful budget cuts, it’s nice to see new launchers like this are still in NASA’s future. Here’s hoping Morpheus brings some robonauts to the moon after all.

[via IEEE Spectrum]

During the dark sports month of February, when there’s nothing to watch but mid-season NBA games, sometimes I think about the NFL draft. With so many long months to go before the NFL returns, it’s the only football-related thing I have, okay? But now I can look at this — some European football, but actual, real American football!

It is not clear exactly what they’re trying to accomplish, though the tournament website says the rules follow the same ones as NFL football. It doesn’t look like it, but in any event it is fun to watch the robots scramble and fall all over themselves in pursuit of the small blue pigskin. One red robot grabs it and promptly, awkwardly fumbles, prompting other robots to flip into the air and attempt to recover it.

The tournament is for high school students in Japan and there are several regulations, including the height and size of the robots. They can’t weigh more than 6.6 pounds and are remote-controlled. It looks like pure chaos, but it also looks like fun.

[IEEE Spectrum]

Earlier today, Microsoft released the Windows 8 Consumer Preview (beta) at the 2012 Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, giving the general public an opportunity to preview Windows 8 on existing x86 systems and provide feedback. But Microsoft’s “Consumer Preview” event wasn’t just all about the beta released today for x86-based PCs. The company also showcased a number of Windows 8 on ARM devices at today’s event.  Hit the jump for more.

Among the devices showcased today were tablets powered by ARM-based SoCs from NVIDIA (Tegra 3), Qualcomm (Snapdragon S4) and Texas Instruments (OMAP5430). Microsoft also announced a seeding program “to support the creation of compelling Metro style app and device experiences for Windows 8.” Soon after, NVIDIA and Qualcomm announced their support for Microsoft’s Windows on ARM developer seeding program in separate press releases.

As part of this invitation-only seeding program, developers and device makers will be furnished with Windows 8 test PCs based on NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 SoC and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 chip. Texas Instruments has yet to make an announcement in this regard.

“NVIDIA has a long record of supporting software developers working on the cutting edge of innovation,” said Tony Tamasi, senior vice president of content and technology at NVIDIA, in a press release. “We’re furthering this tradition by helping to realize the extraordinary potential of Windows on ARM processors, like Tegra 3.”

“Qualcomm is committed to the Windows on ARM ecosystem and knows that enabling developers is a crucial factor for its success,” said Luis Pineda, senior vice president of product management, computing and consumer products at Qualcomm. “We are now providing Snapdragon S4 test PCs with built-in 4G LTE, activated in some regions, to software application developers.”

The PlayStation Network (PSN) will be down for several hours for scheduled maintenance on March 1, 2012, Sony has announced. The maintenance window, if all goes to plan, is expected to last from 8:00 AM till 10:00 PM PST. Hit the jump for more.

In a post on the official PlayStation blog, the company described the upcoming maintenance event as “significant.” However, it did not give any details as to the exact nature of the maintenance.

“Unlike typical maintenance events, consumers who are already signed-in to PSN will be signed-out, and consumers will be unable to sign in for the duration of the maintenance window,” reads the official announcement. “During this time, users won’t be able to access the PlayStation Store, PlayStation Home, Account Management or play online.”

“PSN enabled websites will not be able to service users, including this one. Please stay tuned to the PlayStation Twitter feed for a notice when PSN is fully back online.”

At a recent event organized to promote new servers from Dell, the company’s eponymous founder and CEO Michael Dell described the world’s third largest PC vendor as an end- to-end IT solutions provider, even going as far as saying “we’re not a PC company.” Actually, Dell’s focus on the enterprise market has a strong arithmetical basis, with the consumer market being many times smaller than the multi-trillion dollar enterprise market. Not only is Round Road, Texas-based Dell in pursuit of a greater share of the enterprise IT market, but it wants to leave no stone unturned along the way.

For instance, it has now emerged that the company has been experimenting with ARM-based servers for quite sometime. This was recently confirmed by none other than the general manager for Dell’s server solutions group, Forrest Norrod, who is reported to have told Forbes: “We’ve had ARM systems in our lab for over a year.”

“If that’s what our customers demand that’s what we’ll offer,” Norrod told Forbes at an event on Monday. “Our management is independent of the processor powering the server. If we wanted to incorporate ARM into our server lineup,  to any management  tool it just looks like a PowerEdge server.”

Even though he credited ARM for “some interesting advancements around power density,” he doesn’t expect ARM to take the server world by storm anytime soon, at least not until the first 64-bit ARM processors hit the market.