Two U.S. astronauts wearing what NASA assured are "healthy" spacesuits prepared for a spacewalk Saturday to lay cable outside the International Space Station, after an equipment failure briefly delayed the mission.

Commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore and flight engineer Terry Virts were expected to begin at around 1250 GMT the first of several spacewalks aimed at preparing the orbiting outpost for the arrival of U.S. commercial crew capsules, bringing astronauts to low-Earth orbit in the coming years.

India's filthy air is cutting 660 million lives short by about three years, while nearly all of the country's 1.2 billion citizens are breathing in harmful pollution levels, according to research published Saturday.

The new study by a team of environmental economists at U.S. universities highlights just how extensive India's air problems have become after years of pursuing an all-growth agenda with little regard for the environment. While New Delhi last year earned the dubious title of being the world's most polluted city, the problem extends nationwide, with 13 Indian cities now on the World Health Organization's list of the 20 most polluted.

A campaign to get universities to stop investing in greenhouse gas-producing fuels came deep into energy country Friday as activists asked the University of Colorado to divest from coal and petroleum companies.

The university's governing Board of Regents took no action on the request from a student group called Fossil Free CU, but two of the nine regents praised the activists for raising the issue and said they wanted to hear more.

As animals evolve they tend to get larger over time, researchers concluded in a sweeping study released Friday that tracked thousands of creatures over a half-billion-year period.

The mean body size of marine animals, for example, increased 150-fold over the past 542 million years, according to the study published in the US journal Science.

Four times more sick and dying sea lion pups have gotten stranded on California beaches this year, and experts say unusually warm ocean water along the West Coast is to blame.

Officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Wednesday about 940 sick and starving young sea lions have washed up on California beaches so far in 2015.

The start of a series of spacewalks to carry out major work at the International Space Station will be delayed by a day to Saturday so NASA can investigate a spacesuits problem.

"Space station managers decided Thursday to move the first two spacewalks by NASA's Expedition 42 commander Barry 'Butch' Wilmore and flight engineer Terry Virts by one day because of added analysis of spacesuits they will wear," said a NASA statement.

Earth's past, present and future come together here on the northern peninsula of Antarctica, the wildest, most desolate and mysterious of its continents.

Clues to answering humanity's most basic questions are locked in this continental freezer the size of the United States and half of Canada: Where did we come from? Are we alone in the universe? What's the fate of our warming planet?

With three complicated spacewalks planned in the coming days, NASA is rushing to resolve a spacesuit problem linked to a 2013 emergency when water dangerously flooded a European astronaut's helmet.

The spacesuits that will be worn by astronauts Barry Wilmore and Terry Virts on their ventures outside the International Space Station are in working order, NASA said Wednesday, but engineers are concerned about a recurring issue with a piece of equipment known as the fan pump separator, part of the spacesuit's temperature control system.

A physicist whose career was highlighted by research that helped capture moving images of the first moon walk has died. Ernest Sternglass was 91.

Cornell University says Sternglass died Feb. 12 of heart failure in Ithaca, New York.

A tiny minnow that lives only in backwaters in Oregon's Willamette Valley is the first fish to be formally removed from Endangered Species Act protection because it is no longer in danger of extinction, officials said Tuesday.

The recovery of the Oregon chub was formally announced by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Deputy Regional Director Richard Hannan.