NASA on Saturday blasted off a new satellite designed to offer a "huge leap" in weather forecasting by sending back more frequent and higher-definition images of severe weather patterns, the U.S. space agency said.

Known as GOES-R (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites), the satellite was built by Lockheed Martin and lifted off atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at 6:42 pm (2342 GMT).

Russia's Soyuz spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station on Saturday, carrying a European, a Russian and an American astronaut for a six-month mission at the orbiting outpost.

"Capture confirmed," said a NASA commentator as the spacecraft docked at the ISS at 4:58 pm (2158 GMT), U.S. space agency live television images showed.

China's Shenzhou-11 spacecraft returned to earth Friday, bringing home two astronauts from the rising power's longest-ever orbital mission in a milestone for its vaulting ambitions.

Skygazers took to high-rise buildings, observatories and beaches Monday to get a glimpse of the closest "supermoon" to Earth in almost seven decades, and snap dramatic pictures.

Under the scorching Zimbabwean sun, cattle seek shade among stunted thorn bushes in the drought-prone district of Zaka, where crops wither due to increasing temperatures and changing weather patterns.

China launched its most powerful rocket ever on Thursday, state media said, as the country presses on with a program which has seen it become a major space power.

A Japanese rocket that fired a weather satellite into space on Wednesday was decked out in colorful manga in a bid to raise awareness among kids about the wonders of the universe.

The H-IIA rocket carrying the Himawari-9 weather satellite blasted into a cloudy sky at the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Kagoshima prefecture at 3:20 pm (0620 GMT).

Oil and gas production may have contributed to four of the five most powerful Los Angeles Basin earthquakes of the early 20th-century oil boom, a new study showed Monday.

Scientists said the Inglewood earthquakes in 1920, Whittier quakes in 1929, Santa Monica in 1930 and Long Beach in 1933 may have all been caused by oil activities.

Three astronauts landed safely in Kazakhstan Sunday following a 115-day mission aboard the the International Space Station, including U.S. astronaut Kate Rubins, the first person to sequence DNA in space.

Scientists in Brazil are preparing to release millions of factory-bred mosquitoes in an attempt to wipe out their distant cousins that carry tropical diseases. The insects' method: have sex and then die.