A Russian Proton-M rocket completed the successful launch Saturday of an advanced Chinese communications satellite that should help expand television coverage in parts of Southeast Asia. The Roscosmos space agency said the AsiaSat 7 satellite was placed in its designed orbit after being launched from the Baikonur space centre in ex-Soviet Kazakhstan. The mission was accomplished after a recent string of Russian space failures that included the …

Russia on Thursday announced its scientists had for the first time made contact with its stranded Mars probe Phobos-Grunt, a day after the European Space Agency said it had received a signal. "A signal from the probe has been received and some telemetry data. At the moment our specialists are working on this information," the Interfax news agency quoted Russian space agency spokesman Alexei Kuznetsov as saying. Interfax said the signal was received …

Three astronauts on Tuesday landed safely in the Kazakh steppe aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule after a stay of over five months aboard the International Space Station, Russian mission control said. American Mike Fossum, Japan's Satoshi Furukawa and Russia's Sergei Volkov touched down outside the remote settlement of Arkalyk in Kazakhstan just before sunrise after undocking from the ISS earlier in the day. "It has landed," said a message flashed …

Excited," "nervous," "terrified" - just three emotions described by a group of US teachers about to take a dizzying "weightless" flight all for the cause of science, naturally. The 30 classroom professionals donned blue "astronaut" jumpsuits to defy gravity in the skies above California, in a project designed to help them capture the imagination of young science students. On the back of her jumpsuit, teacher Michelle Luke taped a drawing made by …

A German firm is to start offering space travel insurance, hoping to cash in on a new wave of 'ordinary astronauts' ahead of next year's first commercial space trips. Insurance giant Allianz will start offering its new space travel policies from the start of next year to coincide with the launch of Virgin Galactic, the spaceflight company owned by Richard Branson's Virgin Group. So far about 450 people have reserved seats for the $200,000 (126,767 …

The sun's abundant energy, if harvested in space, could provide a cost-effective way to meet global power needs in as little as 30 years with seed money from governments, according to a study by an international scientific group. Orbiting power plants capable of collecting solar energy and beaming it to Earth appear "technically feasible" within a decade or two based on technologies now in the laboratory, a study group of the Paris-headquartered …

Two Russians and an American Monday blasted off for the International Space Station (ISS) on a Russian rocket from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Geo News reported. The initial stages of the lift-off went smoothly and a textbook launch would be a boost for Russia, whose space programme has been hit by the loss of half a dozen satellites over the last year due to faulty launches. "Everything is normal and we are feeling fine," the crew …

A black asteroid as big as an aircraft carrier zoomed past Earth on Tuesday, delighting astronomers who trained telescopes on the ancient body in hopes of learning more about its composition and origin. With a diameter estimated at 400 meters, or about a quarter of a mile, Asteroid 2005 YU 55 is the biggest asteroid to make a close pass by Earth since 1976.

A big asteroid made its closest fly-by of Earth in 200 years on Tuesday, but there was never a chance of a crash landing as it zipped past our planet, NASA said. Astronomers around the world aimed their telescopes to catch a glimpse of the 2005 YU55 asteroid, which is the size of an aircraft carrier but was not visible to the naked eye when it passed by at its closest point at 2328 GMT. "This is going to be really hard to see. This is 100 times …

Mobile gaming firm Rovio said on Wednesday its hit game Angry Birds had reached a record 500 million downloads in less than two years since its launch. "It's more than any game ever before," Rovio's marketing chief Peter Vesterbacka told a conference in Helsinki. Unlike most mobile-game crazes, Angry Birds -- in which players use a slingshot to attack pigs who steal the birds' eggs -- has stayed at the top of the charts since it was launched for …