Despite the quiet forecast for this year's hurricane season, the director of the Miami-based National Hurricane Center warned Thursday not to let guards down completely.

Rick Knabb, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's NHC, emphasized that even a single storm that hits land can have a huge impact.

Richard Branson's dream of commercial space flights took a step nearer reality after Virgin Galactic signed a deal with U.S. aviation authorities to let it blast paying customers into space, the company said Thursday.

The agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) sets out how routine space missions from the Spaceport America base in the U.S. state of New Mexico will be coordinated with the normal air traffic control system.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo urged the world's major cities Thursday to unite in the fight against climate change.

Stressing that half the world's population is now urbanized, she noted that cities are already responsible for 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and the consumption of three quarters of Earth's energy resources.

A sleek, white gumdrop-shaped space capsule that aims to carry up to seven astronauts to the International Space Station and return to land anywhere on Earth was unveiled Thursday by SpaceX.

The Dragon V2, short for version two, is the first attempt by a private company to restore Americans' ability to send people to the orbiting space station in the wake of the space shuttle program's retirement in 2011.

A crew of Russian, German and U.S. astronauts docked with the International Space Station Thursday as space cooperation between Moscow and the West continues despite their worst standoff since the Cold War.

"At 5:44 am Moscow time (01:44 GMT), the manned Soyuz TMA-13M spacecraft docked successfully with the ISS," the Russian space agency Roskosmos said in a statement.

A Japanese stem cell scientist, under pressure over inconsistencies in her groundbreaking research, has agreed to retract one of the two papers published in the respected journal Nature, reports said Thursday.

Haruko Obokata, 30, was feted after unveiling research that appeared to show a straightforward way to re-program adult cells to become a kind of stem cell.

A microscopic marine creature believed to have been extinct for four million years has been found alive and well in New Zealand waters, researchers said Thursday.

The animal, a tentacled polyp called protulophila, forms colonies inside sea worms and first appeared in the fossil record about 170 million years ago in Europe and the Middle East, government marine agency NIWA said.

Izabella Teixeira, Brazil's Minister of Environment, pictured during a press …

Brazil announced a package of pollution-cutting measures aimed at making this year's World Cup more environmentally friendly, ranging from an emissions-trading scheme to a "green passport" smart-phone application.

The point where the roiling ocean meets the fury of a hurricane's winds may hold the key to improving storm intensity forecasts — but it's nearly impossible for scientists to see.

That may change this summer, thanks to U.S. federal funding and a handful of winged drones that can spend hours spiraling in a hurricane's dark places. The drones will be transmitting data that could help forecasters understand what makes some storms fizzle while others strengthen into monsters.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday launched a push to get girls interested in science and technology, warning the country would miss out if it did not attract women to those fields.

"There's so much talent to be tapped if we're working together," Obama said at the annual White House Science Fair, where students from elementary to high school present winning projects.