Potty humor just got prehistoric. A new study suggests that dinosaurs may have helped keep an already overheated world warmer with their flatulence and burps 200 million years ago. The research published Monday in Current Biology suggests that large dinosaurs made a significant contribution to the greenhouse effect back then. Study author David Wilkinson of Liverpool John Moores University in England estimated that about 570 million tons of methane …

The US company SpaceX on Wednesday said it was unlikely to meet a planned May 7 launch to send its Dragon space capsule to the International Space Station, but did not set a new date for the attempt. "At this time, a May 7th launch appears unlikely," spokeswoman Kirstin Grantham said in a statement. "SpaceX is continuing to work through the software assurance process with NASA. We will issue a statement as soon as a new launch target is set." …

WASHINGTON: SpaceX said Monday it is pushing back by a week a bid to become the first private company to attempt to launch a spacecraft to the International Space Station on an unmanned cargo mission. "After reviewing our recent progress, it was clear that we needed more time to finish hardware-in-the-loop testing and properly review and follow up on all data," said SpaceX spokewoman Kirstin Brost Grantham. "While it is still possible that …

Brain and eye problems have surfaced in astronauts who spent more than a month in space, marking a potential setback to plans for longer deep space missions, a US study said Tuesday. The research in the journal Radiology analyzed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of 27 astronauts with an average of 108 days in space, either on space shuttle missions or aboard the International Space Station. Shuttle missions typically lasted a couple …

A strong geomagnetic storm is racing from the Sun toward Earth, and its expected arrival on Thursday could affect power grids, airplane routes and space-based satellite navigation systems, U.S. space weather experts said. The storm, a big cloud of charged particles flung from the Sun at about 4.5 million miles per hour (7.2 million km per hour), was spawned by a pair of solar flares, scientists said. This is probably the strongest such event in …

A stolen US space agency laptop containing codes that control the International Space Station did not put the orbiting lab in peril, a NASA spokesman said on Friday. The unencrypted notebook computer went missing in March 2011 and "resulted in the loss of the algorithms used to command and control the International Space Station," NASA Inspector General Paul Martin told lawmakers this week. But the US space agency insisted that international astronauts …

Solar radiation from a massive sun storm - the largest in nearly a decade - collided with the Earth's atmosphere on Tuesday, prompting an airline to reroute flights and skywatchers to seek out spectacular light displays. US carrier Delta Air Lines said it had adjusted flight routes for transpolar journeys between Asia and the United States to avoid problems caused by the radiation storm, a spokesman said. NASA confirmed the coronal mass ejection …

The global average temperature last year was the ninth-warmest in the modern meteorological record, continuing a trend linked to greenhouse gases that saw nine of the 10 hottest years occurring since the year 2000, NASA scientists said on Thursday. A separate report from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said the average temperature for the United States in 2011 as the 23rd warmest year on record. The global average …

The second of two NASA lunar probes on a mission to study the Moon's inner core so scientists can better understand the origins of planets went into orbit Sunday as planned, the US space agency said. The second Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL-B) began orbiting the Moon at about 2243 GMT, according to officials at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. GRAIL-A reached its lunar orbit on Saturday. "NASA greets …

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system, a milestone in the search for planets like the earth, the space agency said on Tuesday. The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are the smallest planets outside the solar system confirmed around a star like the Sun, NASA said in a statement. The planets are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone where …