Read the latest positive news, breakthroughs, and inspiring stories about engineering achievement, curated daily by BrightWire.
Egypt is preparing to test the first section of a massive high-speed electric rail network that will eventually stretch 2,250 km across the country. The initial 660-km line will connect the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, creating what officials call a "new Suez Canal on rails."
A Soviet spacecraft designed to last 32 minutes on Venus kept working for 127 minutes in heat hot enough to melt lead, sending back the first color photos from another planet's surface. The 1982 mission showed what's possible when engineers push the boundaries of extreme-environment exploration.
A spacecraft the size of a small water heater solved a mystery humans pondered for millennia: what does the far side of the Moon actually look like? Soviet engineers built a flying darkroom that developed film in space and beamed the first images home across 240,000 miles.
A Soviet lunar rover that went silent in 1971 was rediscovered in 2010, and its laser reflector still bounced signals back to Earth perfectly. The discovery proved that some technology, built right the first time, can survive decades in the harshest conditions imaginable.
The most powerful space telescope ever built operates a million miles from Earth on the same electricity it takes to boil water. Even more incredible: it had to deploy perfectly the first time, with 344 ways it could have failed.
Chinese automaker Geely just made racing history, winning its very first FIA TCR World Tour race at Italy's Misano circuit with a brand-new car. Driver Ma Qinghua took the checkered flag in only the team's second race ever, proving Chinese engineering can compete with the world's best.