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."
The design for a huge rocket to take humans to asteroids and Mars has been unveiled by the US space agency Nasa.
The Space Launch System (SLS), as it is currently known, will be the most powerful launcher ever built - more powerful even than the Saturn V rockets that put men on the Moon.
On top of the SLS, Nasa plans to put its Orion astronaut capsule, which is already in development.
The agency says the first launch should occur towards the end of 2017.
This will be an uncrewed test flight, and it is estimated the project will have cost $18bn (£11.4bn) by that stage.
"The next chapter of America's space exploration story is being written today," said Nasa's top official, General Charles Bolden.
"President Obama has challenged us to be bold and dream big, and that's exactly what we do.
"While I was proud to fly in the space shuttle, tomorrow's explorers will dream of one day walking on Mars."
The SLS will borrow many technologies developed for the recently retired space shuttle programme. These include the shuttle orbiter's main engines.
But whereas the reusable spaceplane had three such power units on its aft, the SLS main core stage in its full-up configuration will have five.
A further stage on top will provide additional muscle, as will shuttle-like strap-on boosters. Although, again, these will be bigger than those used on the shuttle.
Cape Canaveral - An unmanned US rocket blasted off on Saturday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to deliver twin robotic probes to the moon in the hope of learning what is inside.
The 124-foot (37.8-meter) booster soared off its seaside launch pad at 9:08 a.m. EDT (1308 GMT), arcing over the Atlantic Ocean as it raced into orbit.
Less than two hours later, both probes were flying freely from the rocket's upper-stage motor and were communicating with Nasa's Deep Space Network.
“I couldn't be more pleased,” Jim Adams, deputy director of Nasa’ss planetary division, told reporters after the launch.
Liftoff of the Delta 2 rocket occurred two days later than planned due to high winds at the launch site and because of time required to review data on the rocket after its tanks were drained of fuel following an earlier launch scrub on Thursday.
The twin satellites on board are headed to a point in space 932,0570 miles (1.5 million km) away where gravitational pull from the Sun and Earth balances out.
From there, the Nasa Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, satellites will make a long, slow approach to the moon, arriving on Dec. 31 and Jan 1.
The twin GRAIL probes are designed to precisely map the moon's gravity so scientists can learn what lies beneath the lunar crust and whether the moon's core is solid, liquid or some combination of the two.
Combined with high-resolution imagery, ongoing analysis of rock and soil samples returned by the 1969-1972 Apollo missions and computer models, the gravity maps are expected to fill in the biggest missing piece in the puzzle of how Earth's natural satellite formed and evolved.
More Articles...
- NASA releases new Apollo site photographs
- Dwarf planet mysteries beckon to New Horizons
- It's alive!
- Will the space station be abandoned?
- Russia and Europe to Send Man to Mars?
- Astrobotic expedition
- Space Junk Cleanup Poses Grand Challenge for 21st Century
- Juno Launched!
- Salisbury man to be first to fly tourists into space
- Foreign nations push into space as U.S. pulls back
