Hugh Herr, an MIT professor who has devoted his life to creating bionic limbs since he had both his legs amputated after a climbing accident, was awarded Spain's top science prize Wednesday.

Falling energy costs, including from the rise of renewables, are making the controversial expansion of Hungary's sole nuclear plant with Russian reactors less viable, one of the country's energy chiefs said Monday.

"Due to the development of renewable resources, we can see clearly that the price of energy will fall in the future," said the chief executive of Hungary's national electricity company MVM, Peter Csiba, in an interview in the leading Hungarian daily Nepszabadsag.

SpaceX launched an Asian communications satellite into a distant orbit Friday and for the fourth time managed to recover the rocket that did the work.

Thirteen species of Indonesian birds, including the country's symbolic Javan Hawk-eagle, are at serious risk of extinction mainly due to the pet trade, a wildlife watchdog warned Wednesday.

The vast Indonesian archipelago is home to a dizzying array of birds and keeping them as pets has long been part of the national culture, with birdcages a common sight outside homes and shops across the country.

U.S. biochemical engineer Frances Arnold on Tuesday won a million-euro technology prize in Finland for her work on "directed evolution", a method of rewriting DNA to improve medicines and develop green fuels.

"Frances Arnold receives the 2016 Millennium Technology Prize in recognition of her discoveries that launched the field of 'directed evolution', which mimics natural evolution to create new and better proteins in the laboratory," the Technology Academy Finland, which awards the prize at two-year intervals, said in a statement.

India successfully launched its first model space shuttle on Monday, a top official said, as New Delhi joined the race to develop a reusable rocket to make space travel easier and cheaper.

The winged shuttle blasted off on a rocket from the southeastern spaceport of Sriharikota at about 7:00am (0130 GMT), with television footage showing it streaming through a clear sky.

A volcano erupted Friday near the capital of Costa Rica, choking surrounding communities with smoke and ash.

In the capital San Jose, 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the Turrialba volcano, the air reeked of sulphur as dust and ash coated buildings and vehicles.

Monster tsunamis caused by meteor impacts swept across the northern plains of Mars more than three billion years ago, radically resculpting the edges of the Red Planet's ancient seas, according to a study published Thursday.

Australia's Great Barrier Reef could be beyond saving in five years without "now or never" funding to improve water quality as climate change ravages the World Heritage-listed site, scientists warned Thursday.

Australian scientists have found evidence of a huge asteroid they say slammed into Earth some 3.46 billion years ago -- making it the second oldest known to have hit the planet and larger than the one blamed for wiping out the dinosaurs.

Andrew Glikson, from the Australian National University's Planetary Institute, said that while the asteroid would have been massive, the exact location of where it hit was not known.