Moscow, May 10 : An ammonia leak was detected in the cooling system in the US section of the International Space Station, a Russian space agency official said Friday.

"Yes, there was indeed an ammonia leak. It took place in the American section of the station, and it is not critical," said Alexei Krasnov of Roscosmos.

"Unfortunately, it is not the first time that something like this has happened. The Russian section of the station and all other parts of it are working normally," he said.

Chennai, May 6 : India's space agency is planning to have a total of five rocket launches in 2013 from its rocket launch pad at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, around 80 km from here. This will include a mission to Mars later this year.

Four of the launches are expected to happen between June and December, including the launch of communication satellite G-Sat 14 using heavier rocket - Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) - powered with a domestic cryogenic engine.

New Delhi, May 3 : Conservator Aparajita Datta has won the Whitley Award, also called "Green Oscar", for her work to save threatened hornbills in the forests of Arunachal Pradesh.

Datta is one of eight grassroots conservation leaders awarded a share of prize funding worth £295,000 by the Whitley Fund for Nature.

Datta leads a programme to conserve hornbills in the Eastern Himalaya at the Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF), an NGO set up in 1996 to promote science-based wildlife conservation in India.

Mumbai, April 27 " Planet Saturn will come close to Earth Sunday - its closest position till 2023 - and will be visible directly opposite the Sun, an astrophysicist said here Saturday.

Akash Ganga Centre for Astronomy chief Bharat Adur said that the position is called "Saturn opposition".

"Though Saturn coming close to Earth is a regular annual phenomenon, 2013 is significant since it will remain the closest encounter till 2023," Adur told IANS.

On Sunday evening, Saturn will be seen rising in the east at sunset and set the next morning (Monday) at sunrise.

Washington, April 23 : The three smartphone satellites sent into space Sunday by the maiden flight of Orbital Science Corp.'s Antares rocket are operating normally in orbit, the US space agency NASA said.

Transmissions from all the three PhoneSats, believed to be the lowest-cost satellites ever put in space, have been received at multiple ground stations on the Earth, said NASA in a statement Monday.

The satellites are expected to remain in orbit for as long as two weeks, while the PhoneSat team at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California will continue to monitor them in the coming days, reported Xinhua citing NASA.

Moscow, April 22 : A Soyuz-U rocket carrying a Progress M-19M cargo spacecraft was brought to the launch site of the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan Monday and installed on the launch pad, Russia's Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) said.

The launch of the Soyuz-U carrier rocket and Progress M-19M space freighter is scheduled for Wednesday.

The Progress space freighter will deliver over 2.5 tonnes of cargo to the International Space Station, including payloads for the crew's work, fuel for the space station, food supplies, water and oxygen for cosmonauts and astronauts.

Washington, April 19 : NASA's "planet-hunting" space telescope Kepler has discovered seven new planets, including two that are orbiting in the zone "between fire and ice" that could sustain life, experts said.

"We have found two planets in the habitable zone of another star and they are the best candidates we have found to date for habitable planets," said William Borucki, principal investigator for the Kepler mission at NASA's Ames Research Center in California.

Los Angeles, April 17  : Scientists have shown that a component of plant cells can be transformed into starch which consequently could be a potent source of nutrients.

A team of Virginia Tech researchers has succeeded in transforming cellulose into starch, a process that has the potential to provide a previously untapped nutrient source from plants not traditionally thought of as food crops.

Washington, April 12 : Planned space adventures over the next few decades for the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) read like a science fiction thriller with a touch of the wild west thrown in, with plans to journey farther and faster than anyone from Earth has gone before.

"The idea is to continue branching ourselves out very slowly into the solar system, pushing the limits and going deeper into space than ever," said NASA spokesman Allard Beutel, in an interview with RIA Novosti Thursday.

Blagoveshensk (Russia), April 12 : Russia will develop new technology including huge new rockets for manned flights to the Moon and Mars by 2030, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said Friday.

Rogozin, who oversees the space and military industries, said Russia is planning to design a carrier rocket with a payload of 130 to 180 tonnes as well as powerful interplanetary vehicles.

The new technologies will lay the ground for manned flights to the Mars, Rogozin said.

Jerusalem, April 12 : An Israeli biotech company has developed a way to turn extra fat into new bones to replace missing or damaged bone structure.

With the new findings, Bonus Biogroup based in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, will help millions of people all over the world suffering from bone diseases such as osteoporosis, bone infection and also accidents that cause irreparable damage to the bones, reported Xinhua.

By making the cells grow in a scaffold after scanning the patient's bones to determine the shape, these cells then fill a mould and make a completely new bone resembling the lost one.

A team of archaeologists have said that they have discovered an ancient wine-pressing factory spreading across more than 1,000 square feet in Israel among the ruins of an ancient Byzantine settlement.

The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said that researchers discovered a ceramic lantern shaped like a miniature church and carved with crosses, indicating that the wine factory belonged to a Christian. The discovery was made at Hamei Yo'av in Israel along the ancient settlement from the Byzantine times.

New Delhi, April 1 : Lauding Indian space agency ISRO, US astronaut Sunita Williams Monday said it was doing an excellent job and wished that more Indian American women follow her and the late Kalpana Chawla into space.

Williams, 47, who holds the world record for the most spacewalk time - 50 hours 40 minutes - by a female astronaut, is in India on a week-long trip.

"India is doing excellent in space programme and has a huge resource of people. ISRO (India Space Research organisation) is doing a great job," Williams told IANS.

Beijing, March 29 : China plans to build two new research stations in Antarctica by 2015 and site inspections are already being conducted by an expedition team, authorities said.

A summer station that can be used from December to March will be set up between the existing Zhongshan and Kunlun stations to provide replenishment and other logistical support, the State Oceanic Administration (SOA) said Thursday.

The station will be used to study geology, glaciers, geomagnetism and atmospheric science in Antarctica, reported Xinhua.

Bangalore, March 28 : Top Indian space scientist U. R. Rao has been inducted into the Satellite Hall of Fame in Washington DC by the Society of Satellite Professionals International, in the US.

"Rao is the first Indian space scientist to be inducted into the Satellite Hall of Fame and joins the select group of about 50 members, including Arthur C. Clarke, Van Allen, Harold Rosen, Peter Jackson and Robert Berry, among others," the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said in a statement here Thursday.

Mumbai, March 23 : Bollywood star Ajay Devgn, who has joined hands with WWF-India to pledge his support to the Earth Hour 2013, has urged everyone to use energy wisely and save as much as possible.

The Earth Hour will be observed Saturday starting 8:30 p. m. to 9:30 p. m.

Ajay said everyone needs to unify for this purpose, and even teach children the importance of saving energy.

Defence scientists have successfully test fired the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile launched from an underwater platform in the Bay of Bengal.

The scientists tested the new version of the supersonic cruise missile that can be launched from submarines under water. BrahMos Chief Executive Officer (CEO) A Sivathanu Pillai said that the submarine-launched version of BrahMos was successfully test fired from an underwater pontoon in the Bay of Bengal.

Bhubaneswar, March 20 : India successfully tested the supersonic cruise missile BrahMos from underwater in the Bay of Bengal off the Andhra Pradesh coast, an official said Wednesday.

"The submarine-launched version of the missile was test-fired at 2.10 p. m. from a submerged platform off the coast of Visakhapatnam," BrahMos Aerospace spokesperson Praveen Pathak told IANS.

This was the first time that a supersonic cruise missile was launched vertically from a submerged platform, he said.

Environmentalists and activists have warned that the house sparrow might face extinction from out cities if they are not protected.

Tokyo, March 18 : Japanese scientists have developed a new drug-delivery gel that releases the drug in response to pressure applied by the patient, Science Daily reports.

A research group headed by Katsuhiko Ariga, principal investigator, Kohsaku Kawakami, scientist, and Hironori Izawa, a post-doctoral researcher (currently assistant professor, Tottori University) of the NIMS International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA) succeeded in developing a gel material which is capable of releasing drugs in response to pressure applied.