Apple’s iPad launched last week, boasting the “best way to experience the Web.” But will it really help or hurt?

On the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon mission, the privatization of space travel is underway. While the prospect of a spacecraft in every garage isn’t near, some companies hope to sell suborbital flights — to the edges of space — within the next few years.

Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte, sporting a foam clown nose, landed back on Earth after a $35 million working vacation at the international space station.

You know the foolish game of cat and mouse Palm has been playing with Apple? The one where Palm hacks its own Pre phone to masquerade as an iPod and climb unnoticed into iTunes’ bed?

What did you do this summer? Flat World Knowledge stayed busy on campus and now has 40 times as many students and more than 10 times the colleges using their freemium, open-source digital textbooks as they did spring semester. And they did it the old-fashioned way — one professor at a time.

Say the words “tablet computer” and ten bucks says it’s Apple’s iPad that springs to mind. But that doesn’t mean other companies aren’t busy building their own version of a touch-enabled, multimedia-sporting, slab of portable computing goodness.

This week’s Game Developers Conference reinforces the iPhone’s status as a top gaming platform. For the first time, the GDC advisory board is devoting an entire summit to Apple’s smartphone.

The oldest-known hominid skeleton was a 4-foot-tall female who walked upright more than 4 million years ago and offers new clues to how humans may have evolved, scientists say.

The world’s largest, fastest fully solar-powered boat is being built in preparation for a round-the-world challenge.

We’re reviewing two $99 turn-by-turn navigation applications for the iPhone, TomTom and Navigon. Yes, that’s right, a $99 application for your phone to take the place of a stand-alone device that doesn’t cost much more than that.

Space shuttle Discovery was scheduled to launch early Tuesday morning for a mission to deliver equipment to the international space station.

For 19-year-old Rodney Bradford, a simple Facebook status update turned into much more: a rock-solid alibi after he was accused of a crime.

Now that they’ve gotten a peek at it, publishers of books, newspapers and magazines are hoping Apple’s forthcoming iPad tablet device will breathe new life into their struggling industry.

Two U.S. spacecraft crashed on the moon Friday — on purpose. The goal of the mission was to scan the resulting plume of moon dust for the presence of water. NASA officials said the impacts were “successful” and produced helpful data.

The fourth quarter of 2009 for the music and video game industries is shaping up to be all about the Beatles. And both could use some “Help!” Sales of music CDs continue to plunge, and video games sales have dropped nearly 20 percent from last year.

NASA is monitoring debris in space moving in the vicinity of the international space station and the Shuttle Discovery docked with it, officials said late Wednesday.