Vladimir Putin unveiled that Russia had developed a new type of weapon that flies faster than the speed of sound and looks like a “fireball” in March 2018. Less than a week before the start of 2019, information about its successful test launch was released. [...]

The test of the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle took place on 26 December, when it reached a speed of Mach 27 and successfully struck a target 6,000 kilometres away. The Zvezda TV channel, the official media outlet of the Russian Defence Ministry, has published a new video of the test launch of the hypersonic missile Avangard, depicting it from the launch command centre. [...]

SpaceX founder Elon Musk praised the Russian-built RD-180 rocket engine for looking awesome but said his bitter rivals Lockheed and Boeing ought to be ashamed of using it during their launches. The eccentric tech billionaire said a few nice words about the RD-180 on Twitter, while mocking his competitors at the same time. [...]

The cooling system, which is the most important element of the Russian space transport and energy unit developed on the basis of megawatt-class nuclear electric propulsion, has been successfully tested in Russia, materials published on the government procurement website on Monday stated. [...]

Russia may walk out of a joint project with NASA to build a lunar station as it doesn’t want to “play second fiddle” in the effort. Instead, Moscow mulls joining forces with BRICS countries, a Roscosmos head has confirmed. [...]

British oceanographers have concluded a decades-long investigation into the Bermuda Triangle and finally determined what is behind the hundreds of mysterious disappearances in the region. The mysterious 700,000sqm triangle, stretching between the tip of Florida, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda, and has been the center of public fascination for over 100 years, when reports first started emerging of an unu [...]

Russia will continue supplying RD-180 rocket engines, which are used by NASA and the Pentagon, to the United States until at least 2020. “We signed the contract until 2020, and we will supply our partners with six more RD-180 engines,” said Igor Arbuzov, CEO of Russia’s Energomash. The RD-180 engines operate at the first stage of the US Atlas V rockets. [...]

Lockheed Martin’s F-35, the most expensive aircraft in history, "is almost like an invisible fighter," in the words of US President Donald Trump; however, a new report indicates an Israeli version of the warplane showed up on a publicly accessible flight tracker on the web. The jet was detected by flight tracking site Flightradar24.com flying north along the Israeli coast after taking off from [...]

Problems have been plaguing the new class of US destroyers, with the first ship in the series also having faced technical issues during early testing. The Zumwalt-class destroyer USS Michael Monsoor has been forced to return to the shipyard after one of its Rolls-Royce MT30 marine gas turbine engines suffered irreparable damage during acceptance trials, Rear Adm. William Galinis said in an [...]

Russia has commenced work on the Soyuz-5 rocket, expected to become an ultra-heavy vehicle for future space exploration missions, Roscosmos head has announced. A number of Russia’s flagship research and development centers began working on Soyuz-5 project, Roscosmos’ Director-General Dmitry Rogozin said on Twitter. [...]

The US government is slated to receive one of two batches of Russian-made rocket engines in the second quarter of 2018, according to a leading Russian rocket designer, at nearly the same point when the newly created US Space Force is being established as a new branch of the US armed forces. [...]

The experimental new treatment, being developed by researchers from the Moscow-based Russian National Research Medical University, has been successfully tested on cancer-afflicted lab mice, showing a nearly 70% increase in the animals' lifespan. The drug consists of magnetite nanoparticles laced with a toxic cytostatic agent, which attacks and destroys tumor cells. [...]

The grandiose construction of the century has been completed; the world’s longest sea bridge connecting Hong Kong, Zhuhai and Macau will be opened this year. The chief engineer and the inspiration behind the project, 43-year-old Zhang Jinwen told Sputnik about how they started designing the bridge 18 years ago, the difficulties that the engineers had encountered in building one of the world’s [...]

Moscow and Beijing will team up to create an integrated navigation system based on Russia’s Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) and the Chinese BeiDou. The satellite system will cover most of Eurasia. The countries will reportedly negotiate the merger in May at the International Conference on Advanced Technologies in Manufacturing and Materials Engineering in the Chinese city of Harbin, [...]

The American electric-car company Tesla will be bankrupt within four months unless its CEO Elon Musk “pulls a rabbit out of his hat,” according to hedge fund manager John Thompson. “Companies eventually have to make a profit, and I don’t ever see that happening here,” the head of Vilas Capital Management told Market Watch. [...]

Russia's Kalashnikov Concern, which is known throughout the world for its production of reliable AK assault rifles, has reportedly decided to foray into fresh fields. The Russian defense manufacturing concern Kalashnikov has agreed with State Corporation Rostec to acquire 60 percent of the shares of the Molniya research and production association, which developed the first-ever Soviet space [...]

A new high-speed bullet train has been rolled out by the Central Japan Railway (JR Tokai). It will debut in 2020 on the Tokaido Shinkansen line, running between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka. According to JR Tokai, the new Shinkansen N700S or Shinkansen ‘Supreme’ train will be smarter, sleeker and quieter. [...]

If Western sanctions go as far as excluding Russia from the world wide web, the country's own internet is ready, according to the Russian presidential aide on the internet, German Klimenko. "Technically, we are ready for anything now,” he told NTV news channel. However, the shutdown will not be painless, Klimenko added. [...]

German car maker Porsche continues to impress and is mulling a new way to create a vehicle which would be able to easily navigate around any potential gridlock on city highways. In an interview with the German magazine Automobilwoche, Porsche sales chief Detlev von Platen said that it did not rule out the creation of a flying passenger vehicle by Volkswagen's sports car maker. [...]