NASA's Artemis 3 mission, set to return humans to the Moon in 2025, might not involve a crewed landing after all, an official said Tuesday.

Jim Free, the space agency's associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, told reporters in a briefing that certain key elements would have to be in place -- notably the landing system that is being developed by SpaceX.

The Southwestern U.S. is bracing for another week of blistering temperatures, with forecasters on Monday extending an excessive heat warning through the weekend for Arizona's most populated area, and alerting residents in parts of Nevada and New Mexico to stay indoors.

The metro Phoenix area is on track to tie or to break a record set in the summer of 1974 for the most consecutive days with the high temperature at or above 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 Celsius). Even the morning low temperatures are tying historic records.

Scientists are wondering if global warming and El Nino have an accomplice in fueling this summer's record-shattering heat.

The European climate agency Copernicus reported that July was one-third of a degree Celsius (six-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) hotter than the old record. That's a bump in heat that is so recent and so big, especially in the oceans and even more so in the North Atlantic, that scientists are split on whether something else could be at work.

Russia said Monday it plans to launch a lunar lander this week after multiple delays, hoping to return to the Moon for the first time in nearly fifty years.

Extreme rainfall accompanied by deadly flooding hit the United States and several other countries over the weekend and last week.

There were several dozen fatalities in central and southern regions of South Korea, including the Chongju region where an underpass flooded and drowned motorists who became trapped in their submerged vehicles.

A sickly ginger kitten named Bebe is pulled out of a cat carrier at a veterinary clinic in the Cypriot capital, Nicosia.

Despite warnings to stay away from Iceland's latest volcanic eruption near Reykjavik, a group of curious visitors told AFP they couldn't resist the lure of lava that is "orange like the sun."

While volcanologists say the eruption remains "low intensity" for now, initial estimates indicate that its flow is significantly more powerful than the two previous eruptions in 2021 and 2022 on the Reykjanes peninsula.

A SpaceX capsule carrying two Saudi astronauts has splashed down off the coast of Florida, completing the second private mission to the International Space Station.

The United Arab Emirates unveiled plans Monday to send a spaceship to explore the solar system's main asteroid belt, the latest space project by the oil-rich nation after it launched the successful Hope spacecraft to Mars in 2020.

Dubbed the Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt, the project aims to develop a spacecraft in the coming years and then launch it in 2028 to study various asteroids.

China's burgeoning space program plans to place astronauts on the moon before 2030 and expand the country's orbiting space station, officials said Monday.

Monday's announcement comes amid against the background of a rivalry with the U.S. for reaching new milestones in outer space, reflecting their competition for influence on global events.