This Week in the Future, July 23-27, 2012

This week’s Baarbarian illustration is an ode to one of our heroes–the first female American in space, Sally Ride. (To cheer up, we might recommend looking at this picture of a tiny marmoset for awhile.)

Want to win this Baarbarian illustration on a T-shirt? It’s easy! The rules: Follow us on Twitter (we’re @PopSci) and retweet our This Week in the Future tweet. One of those lucky retweeters will be chosen to receive a custom T-shirt with this week’s Baarbarian illustration on it, thus making the winner the envy of their friends, coworkers and everyone else with eyes. (Those who would rather not leave things to chance and just pony up some cash for the t-shirt can do that here.) The stories pictured herein:

• Sally Ride, America’s First Female Astronaut, Has Died
• India to Predict Monsoon Rains With Supercomputer Accuracy
• Japanese Cubesat Will Flash Morse Code Messages in the Sky This Fall
• Digital Iris Fakes Made with Evolving Algorithm Fool Biometric Scanners

And don’t forget to check out our other favorite stories of the week:

• Signals From the Void
• Plastic-Eating Underwater Drone Could Swallow the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
• FYI: Did Prehistoric Birds Evolve Flight By Falling Out of Trees?
• Mars Rover Curiosity’s Siblings: A Short History of Landings On Alien Planets
• The Totally Custom, Absurdly Light 3-D Printed Shoe That Could Win Olympic Gold
• The Zero-Energy Frontier: Racing to Find the Higgs Boson
• How to Construct the Lightest, Most Open Olympic Stadium Ever Built
• A Working Assault Rifle Made With a 3-D Printer
• How Science Predicts Which Olympic Events Will Be the Most Exciting to Watch
• Archive Gallery: Fun with Magnetism
• The Most Amazing Science Images of the Week, July 23-27, 2012