U.S. firm SpaceX aims for its next big launch into orbit Sunday -- the first of 12 flights in its $1.6 billion contract with NASA to bring supplies to and from the international space station.

The launch is the next step in American efforts to commercialize the space industry, in the hope of keeping down costs and spreading them among a wider group than governments alone.

Poland sold €40 million ($52 million) worth of CO2 emission rights to Spain on Thursday after successfully bringing its emissions below required limits.

Environment Minister Marcin Korolec and Spain's high official for the environment, Federico Ramos, signed the deal in the ornate 18th century palace of the Lazienki Park, a popular tourist venue.

The World Bank's new president said that he intends to make the impact of global warming on the poor a major theme of his work at the lending institution.

Jim Yong Kim was speaking to reporters ahead of the World Bank's annual meeting in Tokyo this month.

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover is parked at a sand pit and ready to scoop up soil to clean and test its geological sampling hardware, the U.S. space agency said Thursday.

These will be the first solid samples put through Curiosity's high-tech collection and processing tool set -- a task central to realizing the mission's goal of determining whether Mars ever harbored life, NASA officials said.

A palm-sized Japanese satellite in orbit around Earth will flash a Morse code message that will be visible around the world from next month, the mission commander said Friday.

Researchers hope the satellite, measuring 10 centimeters (four inches) cubed and launched from the International Space Station on Friday, will become the first orbiter to transmit an LED message across the night sky.

A Puerto Rican frog about the size of a peanut received federal protection Wednesday, ending a long battle to list it as an endangered species.

The habitat of the coqui llanero, which is the island's smallest tree frog, also received federal protection, covering 615 acres (249 hectares) of freshwater wetland in northern Puerto Rico.

Australian Environment Minister Tony Burke Thursday hit out at Japan's "alleged" scientific whaling as researchers hailed the testing of new acoustic tracking technology for the endangered blue whale.

Burke was given a demonstration of the science in the city of Hobart, where he applauded the innovation and dedication of those working to find out more about the threatened species -- the largest animal that has ever lived.

Researchers have identified a species of puny dinosaur so odd looking -- quills like a porcupine, a parrot-like beak and fangs like a vampire -- it probably deserved a small part in "Jurassic Park."

The finding was reported Wednesday in the online journal ZooKeys by Paul Sereno, a paleontologist and dinosaur specialist at the University of Chicago.

A rare Sumatran tiger has died after his transport to an Indonesia park was aborted and he was put on a second flight because plane passengers complained about the smell, an official said.

The eight-year-old big cat was being sent with other animals on a commercial flight Tuesday from Banda Aceh in the northern tip of Sumatra island to a conservation center on Java island.

Almost a century after a French colonial hunter put a bullet in what came to be viewed as the last Atlas lion living in the wild, a Moroccan zoo is struggling to claw the fabled subspecies back from the brink of extinction.

The majestic animal, also known as the Barbary lion and once common across north Africa, was eventually declared extinct after the 1922 hunt that saw it vanish from its natural environment.