Washington, May 21 : NASA cameras have captured video of the largest explosion it has ever seen on the moon, when a meteorite crashed into the lunar surface in a bright burst of light visible to the naked eye.

"On March 17, 2013, an object about the size of a small boulder hit the lunar surface," said Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, in a statement.

"It exploded in a flash nearly 10 times as bright as anything we've ever seen before."

Washington, May 14 - Canadian astronaut and outgoing International Space Station Commander Chris Hadfield has recorded the first music video in space while floating in zero gravity, strumming an acoustic guitar and crooning his own rendition of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" as a special farewell before heading back to Earth.

The lyrics - tweaked a bit here and there - are particularly fitting:

"Ground control to Major Tom Lock your Soyuz hatch and put your helmet on Ground control to Major Tom Commencing countdown, engines on Detach from station and may God's love be with you"

Washington, May 4 : The US Air Force announced its X-51A Waverider aircraft has achieved the longest hypersonic flight in history, flying for three and a half minutes on scramjet power at more than five times the speed of sound.

The final flight of the unmanned aircraft built by Boeing reached Mach 5.1 over the Pacific Ocean May 1. It travelled over 230 nautical miles in just over six minutes, reported Xinhua.

Washington, May 4 - The first airplane that can fly both day and night powered exclusively by the sun's rays has taken off from California in the first stage of an attempt to fly across the US without using any fuel.

The solar-powered plane, dubbed Solar Impulse, set off Friday from San Francisco shortly after 6 a. m. local time (1300 GMT) and was expected to land in Phoenix, Arizona, 19 hours later for the aircraft's first stop in the first-ever fuel-free transcontinental plane flight.

Washington, May 2 - NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite has captured video images of a massive explosion that erupted Wednesday from the edge of the sun.

The explosion, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), can shoot over a billion tonnes of particles into space at more than one million miles per hour (1.6 million km per hour), NASA said on its website.

None of the particles shot into space are expected to impact Earth as the CME is headed in a different direction, the US space agency said.

Washington, May 1 - NASA will pay an additional $424 million to extend its contract with Russia’s federal space agency (Roscosmos) to transport US astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS), NASA said Tuesday.

About the move, America’s space chief said it underscores how diminished funding is hampering the US space programme.

“While our Russian counterparts have been good partners, it is unacceptable that we don't currently have an American capability to launch our own astronauts,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden wrote in a blog post Tuesday.

Washington, March 31 - Scientists have combined two new technologies to create a unique surveillance tool that could track and detect invasive aquatic species in water bodies of a region, says a study.

A new paper by a team of researchers from the University of Notre Dame's Environmental Change Initiative (ECI) demonstrates how two cutting-edge technologies can provide a sensitive and real-time solution to screening real-world water samples for invasive species before they cause significant damage, reports Science Daily.

Los Angeles, March 30 : Analysis of images of a particular part of the brain could help predict whether a criminal would reoffend or not, says a new study.

The study conducted by the Mind Research Network (MRN) in Albuquerque, New Maxico, shows that neuroimaging data can predict the likelihood of whether a criminal will reoffend after release from prison or not.

The paper, which is to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, studied impulsive and anti-social behaviour and focused on the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a portion of the brain that deals with regulating behaviour and impulsivity.

New York, March 26 - An earthquake measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale jolted Guatemala, the US Geological Survey said.

The epicentre of the Monday quake, with a depth of 200.50 km, was initially determined to be at 14.5994 degrees north latitude and 90.4279 degrees west longitude, Xinhua reported. (IANS)

Washington, March 24 - The return of the US Dragon space freighter from the International Space Station (ISS) to Earth has been postponed by a day due to poor weather conditions, NASA said.

"More than three weeks after arriving at the station, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is ready for the trip back to Earth, now scheduled for Tuesday, March 26," NASA said.

"Dragon's return date, originally scheduled for March 25, was postponed due to inclement weather developing near its targeted splashdown site in the Pacific Ocean," it said.

Washington, March 23 - India and the US have agreed to expand their cooperation in civil space activities ranging from weather and monsoon forecasting to cooperative space exploration work, including future missions to the moon and Mars.

The agreement between the two countries' space agencies, Indian Space Research Organisation and National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) was announced Friday after a meeting of the US-India Civil Space Joint Working Group (CSJWG).

Washington, March 13 - The first rock sample collected by NASA's Curiosity rover shows ancient Mars could have been home to primitive life forms, agency officials have announced.

"A fundamental question for this mission is whether Mars could have supported a habitable environment. From what we know now, the answer is yes," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Programme, during a press conference Tuesday.

Washington, March 8 : Using the Pan-STARRS telescope on Haleakala, astronomers have found a young-looking supernova on the outskirts of a bright elliptical galaxy.

Supernova PS1-12sk is rare in more ways than one.

"This supernova is one-of-a-kind. And it's definitely in the wrong neighborhood," said Nathan Sanders of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), lead author of the discovery paper.

Based on the presence of helium and other features, PS1-12sk is classified as a very rare Type Ibn supernova -- only the sixth such example found out of thousands of supernovae.

Washington, March 8 : An asteroid the size of a city block, will make its closest approach to Earth on Saturday, March 9th, less than 7 days after it was discovered, it has been revealed.

The asteroid dubbed NEO (near-Earth object) 2013 ET was discovered on March 3, 2013, by the Catalina Sky Survey.

Washington, March 8 : A comet will appear in the west at sunset, from around the 8th to the 13th of March 2013, and will be visible to the naked eye up to the end of the month, scientists have said.

The scientists of the Paris Observatory are calculating the path of Comet Pan-STARRS C/2011 L4, which will traverse Cetus, Pisces, Pegasus and Andromeda.