A cargo-laden capsule on Monday was on its way to the International Space Station on NASA's first privately-run supply mission after a successful blast-off atop SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket.

The capsule named Dragon reached orbit and spread its two wing-like solar antennas 10 minutes after the rocket pierced the night sky over the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida late Sunday.

On July 4, scientists announced they had discovered a new particle that may be the fabled Higgs boson, an exploit that would rank as the greatest achievement in physics in more than half a century.

But they also created a headache for the jury that will decide next Tuesday's Nobel Prize for Physics.

An Australian research team said Monday they have found an effective way to kill the destructive crown-of-thorns starfish, which is devastating coral reefs across the Pacific and Indian oceans.

The discovery by James Cook University's Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies in Queensland state comes after a study showed the Great Barrier Reef had lost more than half its coral cover in the past 27 years.

A new search has begun at a Greek island where an ancient device known as the world's "oldest computer" was found over a century ago, an official said Thursday, adding that other discoveries were possible.

Archaeologists this week returned to Antikythera, the Aegean Sea island where sponge divers in 1900-1901 found the so-called Antikythera Mechanism, a remarkable 2nd-century BCE device that tracked the cycles of the solar system.

Australia on Friday unveiled a colossal radio telescope that will allow astronomers to detect distant galaxies and explore the depths of the universe with unprecedented precision.

The Australian SKA Pathfinder telescope, at the remote Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in the Western Australian desert, is made up of 36 antennas, each 12 meters (40 feet) in diameter.

An 11-year-old boy from a nomadic family in Russia's north has stumbled upon a massive well-preserved woolly mammoth, in what scientists describe as the best such discovery since 1901.

Yevgeny Salinder, whose family lives near a polar station in the northern Taimyr Peninsula, discovered the frozen prehistoric animal when he was strolling along the banks of the Yenisei River in late August.

U.S. firm SpaceX aims for its next big launch into orbit Sunday -- the first of 12 flights in its $1.6 billion contract with NASA to bring supplies to and from the international space station.

The launch is the next step in American efforts to commercialize the space industry, in the hope of keeping down costs and spreading them among a wider group than governments alone.

Poland sold €40 million ($52 million) worth of CO2 emission rights to Spain on Thursday after successfully bringing its emissions below required limits.

Environment Minister Marcin Korolec and Spain's high official for the environment, Federico Ramos, signed the deal in the ornate 18th century palace of the Lazienki Park, a popular tourist venue.

The World Bank's new president said that he intends to make the impact of global warming on the poor a major theme of his work at the lending institution.

Jim Yong Kim was speaking to reporters ahead of the World Bank's annual meeting in Tokyo this month.

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover is parked at a sand pit and ready to scoop up soil to clean and test its geological sampling hardware, the U.S. space agency said Thursday.

These will be the first solid samples put through Curiosity's high-tech collection and processing tool set -- a task central to realizing the mission's goal of determining whether Mars ever harbored life, NASA officials said.