Luke Skywalker's space racer hovered unpowered above the ground in the seminal Star Wars movie, but scientists have searched in vain for a real-world technology that realizes the same dream. Now, Cornell University researchers propose that superconductors paired with permanent magnets could fit the bill by suspending vehicles in space unpowered. In the photo, a permanent magnet is being held stationary above a superconductor--magnetically pinned at its current orientation as long as the superconductor is below 88 degrees Kelvin. Magnetic pinning is a decade old, but little utilized, phenomenon that explains the interactions between a superconductor and a permanent magnet. Cornell has adapted the superconductor technology to hold unpowered space-station modules and satellites in place without tethers or retrorockets. Magnetic pinning works by placing two modulesone with an unpowered, but supercooled, superconductor and the other with an ordinary permanent magnetnear each other. The permanent magnet induces currents in the superconductor that are persistent and exactly opposite to the fields generated by the magnet. By strategically placing the magnets and superconductors, the orientation of both modules can be pinned at any orientation. In essence, one "grips" the other with an invisible magnetic glove, and will resist any movement. Even in the presence of outside forces, magnetic pinning will hold the two modules in place. The effect is so intense that is very difficult to move them, even when physically pushed from the outside. According to Cornell, it is almost impossible to force the modules to touch one another, making the technique a fail-safe system for preventing spacecraft modules from colliding with each other.