In Pictures: The 31 weirdest, wackiest and coolest sci/tech stories of 2012

If you thought big space ideas from NASA were getting few and far between, the space agency in December said it would look to build on the great success and popularity of its current Mars Science Laboratory mission to explore the red planet further, including launching another sophisticated robot rover by 2020 and widely expanding other Mars scientific projects. The goal, in part is to further the research needed to send humans to the planet sometime around 2030, NASA said