Portugal next year could approve lithium mining that will reduce Europe's dependence on outside sources for a key ingredient in the frenetic global race to decarbonize the auto industry.

The Hubble Space Telescope's successor is a time-traveling wonder capable of peering back to within a hair's breadth of the dawn of the universe. And it's finally on the brink of flight.

It will be the biggest and most powerful astronomical observatory ever to leave the planet, elaborate in its design and ambitious in its scope. At a budget-busting $10 billion, it is the most expensive and also the trickiest, by far, to pull off.

A Japanese billionaire, his producer and a Russian cosmonaut safely returned to Earth on Monday after spending 12 days on the International Space Station.

Fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa, his producer Yozo Hirano and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin made a soft landing in a Russian Soyuz capsule in the steppes of Kazakhstan at 9:13 a.m. (0313 GMT) about 150 kilometers ( 90 miles) southeast of the city of Zhezkazgan.

Iran appears to be preparing for a space launch as negotiations continue in Vienna over its tattered nuclear deal with world powers, according to an expert and satellite images.

The likely blast off at Iran's Imam Khomeini Spaceport comes as Iranian state media has offered a list of upcoming planned satellite launches in the works for the Islamic Republic's civilian space program, which has been beset by a series of failed launches. Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard runs its own parallel program that successfully put a satellite into orbit last year.

Three ocean drones were launched from Rhode Island Thursday and will travel along the Gulf Stream, collecting data in tough winter conditions that would be challenging for traditional ships with crews.

Saildrone, headquartered in Alameda, California, makes autonomous surface vehicles powered by the wind and sun to measure climate quality data and do mapping in remote oceans for scientists worldwide. The company launched the drones from Newport, Rhode Island, on a mission to sail the strong ocean currents in the North Atlantic for six months.

Google said Wednesday its most popular search terms in 2021 include "Squid Game," Alec Baldwin and the cryptocurrency Dogecoin.

Instagram on Tuesday launched a feature that urges teenagers to take breaks from the photo-sharing platform and announced other tools aimed at protecting young users from harmful content on the Facebook-owned service.

The previously announced "Take A Break" feature encourages teens to stop scrolling if they have been on the social media platform for a while, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in a blog post. It rolled out to the U.S., United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand and Australia on Tuesday and would reach the rest of the world early next year, he said.

Facebook's parent company Meta said Wednesday it has expanded its ban on postings linked to Myanmar's military to include all pages, groups, and accounts representing military-controlled businesses. It had already banned advertising from such businesses in February.

The February action, which also banned military and military-controlled state and media entities from Facebook and Instagram, followed the army's seizure of power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

A Japanese billionaire and his producer rocketed to space Wednesday as the first self-paying space tourists in more than a decade.

Fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa and producer Yozo Hirano, who plans to film his mission, blasted off for the International Space Station in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft along with Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin.

A call is out on Telegram for people opposing Covid restrictions to share private addresses of German "local MPs, politicians and other personalities" who they believe are "seeking to destroy" them through pandemic curbs.