Toddlers can figure out how to make and use simple tools without being taught, said a study Wednesday that defies conventional wisdom and earlier research.

Humans are unique in their capacity to design and wield sophisticated tools, but it has been widely assumed that such skills are passed down through imitation and learning.

NASA has received a record 18,300 resumes from people keen on becoming astronauts, the U.S. space agency said Friday.

The number of applications for a spot in NASA's 2017 class is almost triple the amount that came in during the last recruitment call for the 2012 class.

Visitors are rare these days to the museum of Russia's Space Research Institute in Moscow even though it holds gems like the model of the Soviet Lunokhod, the first ever space rover to land on the Moon, in 1970.

While the Cold War space race fired such cutting-edge projects, Russia's planetary exploration has stalled for the past three decades -- until now.

Japan successfully launched a jointly developed space observation satellite on Wednesday tasked with studying mysterious black holes, the country's space agency said. 

The ASTRO-H satellite, developed in collaboration between the agency, NASA and other groups, is set to orbit at an altitude of about 580 kilometres (360 miles) and observe X-rays emanating mainly from black holes and galaxy clusters.

A 404-carat diamond measuring more than seven centimeters in length and valued at more than $14.3 million has been unearthed in Angola, an Australian mining company has announced.

The Lucapa diamond company said in a statement on Monday that the diamond was the largest ever found in Angola and was believed to be the 27th largest in the world.

China will move nearly 10,000 people to make way for the world's largest radio telescope which promises to help humanity search for alien life, state media reported on Tuesday.

The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), nestled between hills in the southwestern province of Guizhou, is due to start operation this year.

André Migifuloyo and Djuma Uweko lived together, worked together and last October died together fighting to protect Congo's elephants from voracious ivory-seeking poachers.

In the continental war to protect Africa's elephants, the rangers of Garamba National Park in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are manning the frontline.

Space tourism projects leaped off the drawing board when a $10 million prize was offered as an incentive for private development of manned rockets, but it took years to make a winner. Many more years have passed since, but the only space tourists have been a few wealthy people who paid millions of dollars for trips aboard Russian rockets to the International Space Station. Things to know about space tourism:

X PRIZE

Rice-growing techniques learned through thousands of years of trial and error are about to be turbocharged with DNA technology in a breakthrough hailed by scientists as a potential second "green revolution".

Over the next few years farmers are expected to have new genome sequencing technology at their disposal, helping to offset a myriad of problems that threaten to curtail production of the grain that feeds half of humanity.

If you can't seem to quit smoking, or have a tendency to become depressed, you might be able to blame your Neanderthal heritage.

After a massive study linking tens of thousands of modern people's medical records to their genetic histories, certain genes inherited from Neanderthals have been linked to psychiatric disorders, blood clotting and addictive behaviors, researchers said Friday.