Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX launched four astronauts on a flight to the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday, NASA’s first full-fledged mission sending a crew into orbit aboard a privately owned spacecraft.

In a few days, a capsule containing samples of soil from a distant asteroid will be released by a robot spaceship and dropped into Earth’s upper atmosphere. If all goes well, the container will parachute safely on to the Woomera test range in South Australia on December 6, completing a mission that has involved a three-billion-mile journey across our Solar System.

Barely a day passes without the global anxiety of climate change rearing its ugly head. Manmade carbon emissions from fossil fuels are now so significant that scientists claim we have entered a new and vastly different geological time period, the anthropocene.

Climate change is testing the resilience of our planet's birds. While tropical avian species appear especially vulnerable to habitat loss, drought, natural disasters, and declining prey, new research suggests they can withstand heat waves quite well.

Paddling in a canoe through the flood waters left by Hurricane Eta in his rural village near the north coast of Honduras, Adán Herrera took stock of the damage.

The sale of new petrol and diesel cars will be banned within a decade, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to announce this week as part of a broader package of green initiatives.

As the sunset glow reflected on the rippling Erhai Lake in the city of Dali, southwest China's Yunnan Province, visitors and shutterbugs followed paths along the lakeside accompanied by the chattering of black-headed gulls, looking for the best spot to capture the spectacular view.

Iranian Head of Astronomical Union of Teachers Hassan Baghbani said on Sunday that the body, together with the Mehr Observatory in Bushehr, have been given an official seat at the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

The brain continues to surprise us with its magnificent complexity. Groundbreaking research that combines neuroscience with math tells us that our brain creates neural structures with up to 11 dimensions when it processes information.

By Paul Rincon