A defunct Chinese space lab disintegrated under intense heat as it hurtled through Earth's atmosphere Monday and plunged to a watery grave in the South Pacific, Chinese officials said.

India's national space agency has lost contact with a satellite days after it was launched into orbit with much fanfare, authorities said Sunday. 

The launch of NASA's next giant space telescope has been delayed until at least May 2020, the US space agency said Tuesday, in the latest setback for the much-anticipated project.

Yuri Gagarin, feted as a Soviet national hero for being the first man in space, was killed in a plane crash 50 years ago but the details of his death remain shrouded in mystery.

An ultra-fine biodegradable film some 50,000 times thinner than a human hair could be enlisted to protect the Great Barrier Reef from environmental degradation, researchers said Tuesday.

Stephen Hawking's ashes will be buried near the graves of fellow British scientists Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin at Westminster Abbey, it was announced Tuesday.

China has announced it is building the world's fastest wind tunnel to develop a new generation of super-fast airplanes, but it could also be used for hypersonic missile technology.

Very few people may have read and understood "A Brief History of Time", but the physicist Stephen Hawking carved himself out a place in pop culture equaled only by Albert Einstein.

Renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking, whose mental genius and physical disability made him a household name and inspiration across the globe, has died at age 76, his family said Wednesday.

Beneath the elegant curves of the roof on the Seirinji Buddhist temple in Japan's Fukushima region hangs an unlikely adornment: a Geiger counter collecting real-time radiation readings.