Europe is to lead the most ambitious space mission ever undertaken to study the behaviour of the Sun.
Known as Solar Orbiter, the probe will have to operate a mere 42 million km from our star - closer than any spacecraft to date.
The mission proposal was formally adopted by European Space Agency (Esa) member states on Tuesday.
Solar Orbiter is expected to launch in 2017 and will cost close to a billion euros.
Nasa (the US space agency) will participate, providing two instruments for the probe and the rocket to send it on its way.
The Esa delegates, who were meeting in Paris, also selected a mission to investigate two of the great mysteries of modern cosmology - dark matter and dark energy.
Scientists are convinced that these phenomena dominate and shape the Universe but their nature has so far eluded any satisfactory explanation. The discovery in the late 1990s of dark energy and its influence on cosmic expansion was recognised with a Nobel Prize earlier in the day for three scientists.
The Euclid telescope will map the distribution of galaxies to try to get some fresh insight on these dark puzzles.
Like Solar Orbiter, Euclid's cost will be close to a billion euros. However, the mission still needs to clear some legal hurdles and formal adoption is not expected until next year. A launch could occur in 2019.
If humans ever build an interstellar spaceship —a vehicle capable of reaching another star — one of the biggest questions will be which of the billions of stars in the Milky Way should it visit?
Scientists debated possible interstellar destinations at the 100-Year Starship Symposium, a weekend meeting here sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to discuss planning the first mission to another star system.
Among the top priorities for choosing a star to target is its potential to harbor life, said astrobiologist Jill Tarter of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute
"It's really the story of life in the cosmos that is likely to drive exploration beyond the solar system," Tarter said."I think this is the question that will be worth the effort and the pain and the investment of traveling to another star system."
Tarter and other experts agreed that any interstellar mission should try to visit a star that has planets — hopefully planets the right size and distance from their stars to host life.
The symposium is part of the 100 Year Starship Study, a $1 million, one-year project of DARPA and NASA to look into what it would take to launch a mission to another star within a century. In November, the agencies plan to award $500,000 in seed money to an organization that can spearhead the effort to research the necessary technology and logistics.
Having planets isn't the only qualification the chosen star must meet. Another important criterion is its distance from Earth — the closer, the better.
China will launch an experimental craft next week to pave the way for its first space station, an official said on Tuesday.
The launch would bring the growing Asian power closer to matching the United States and Russia with a long-term manned outpost in space.
The Tiangong 1, or "Heavenly Palace," will blast off from a site in the Gobi Desert around Sept. 27-30, adding a high-tech sheen to China's National Day celebrations on Oct. 1, the Xinhua news agency said.
The small, unmanned "space lab" and the Long March rocket that will heave it skyward have been readied on a pad at Jiuquan in northwest Gansu province, Xinhua said, citing an unnamed representative for the country's space program.
It will be the latest show of China's growing prowess in space, and comes while budget restraints and shifting priorities have held back U.S. manned space launches.
The big test comes weeks after its launch, when the eight-ton craft attempts to join up with an unmanned Shenzhou 8 spacecraft that China plans to launch.
"The main task of the Tiangong 1 flight is to experiment in rendezvous and docking between spacecraft," said the Chinese representative, who added that this would "accumulate experience for developing a space station."
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