A French and an American astronaut floated outside the International Space Station Friday for a spacewalk to upgrade the orbiting outpost for the arrival of future space crews.

The spacewalk by France's Thomas Pesquet, 39, and American Shane Kimbrough, 49, officially began at 7:24 am (1124 GMT) when the duo switched their spacesuits to internal battery power.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a law that said manned missions to deep space, including to Mars, would be the U.S. space agency's main goal in the decades to come.

Australia's Great Barrier Reef may never recover from last year's warming-driven coral bleaching, said a study that called for urgent action in the face of ineffective conservation efforts.

SpaceX on Thursday successfully launched a communications satellite into space from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The company's Falcon 9 rocket blasted off at 2 am (0600 GMT) carrying the EchoStar XXIII, a commercial communications satellite for EchoStar Corporation.

A British-owned cruise ship has smashed into and damaged pristine coral reefs in a remote corner of Indonesia known as one of the world's most biodiverse marine habitats, researchers and officials said Tuesday.

Potatoes on Mars? Scientists are reporting promising results growing the tuber under conditions that mimic the Red Planet in an experiment in Peru linked to US space agency NASA.

Stargazers applauded as they were plunged into darkness Sunday when the moon passed in front of the sun in a spectacular "ring of fire" eclipse.

Astronomers and enthusiasts in Argentina were among the first to see the so-called annular eclipse as it crossed South America shortly after 1200 GMT, on course for Africa.

The US space agency said Friday it is considering putting astronauts on an upcoming test flight of the deep space capsule Orion as it aims to orbit the Moon.

Orion is being built with an eye to one day ferrying astronauts to Earth's neighboring planet, Mars, perhaps by the 2030s.

Researchers announced Wednesday the stunning discovery of seven Earth-like planets orbiting a small star in our galaxy, opening up the most promising hunting ground so far for life beyond the Solar System.

All seven roughly match the size and mass of our own planet and are almost certainly rocky, and three are perfectly perched to harbour life-nurturing oceans of water, they reported in the journal Nature.

SpaceX on Sunday blasted off its Falcon 9 rocket carrying the unmanned Dragon cargo ship, packed with food and supplies for the six astronauts living at the International Space Station.