Orbital Sciences Corporation's unmanned Cygnus cargo ship left the International Space Station Friday on its way to a fiery re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.

The spacecraft was released from the orbiting lab at 6:40 am (1040 GMT), NASA said in a live broadcast of the event.

Ramona Yesenia stood in her town square with two empty jugs, waiting for water to replace the municipal supply contaminated by a chemical spill that turned Mexico's Sonora river orange.

Yesenia is one of 20,000 people left without water since a massive sulfuric acid leak last week at the Buenavista copper mine in northwestern Mexico, one of the largest in the world.

After more than a year of public criticism of its treatment of killer whales, SeaWorld said Friday that it will build new, larger environments at its theme parks and will fund additional research on the animals along with programs to protect ocean health and whales in the wild.

The Orlando, Florida, company said the renovations have been in the works for some time and that they are not a response to the documentary "Blackfish" or the criticism of the company that followed the release of the film.

Seven grains of stardust that are believed to come from outside our solar system are revealing new hints about what the universe is made of, scientists said Thursday.

Some are fluffy like snowflakes, not dense like experts expected, according to the study in the US journal Science that describes the first close look at what astronomers have only been able to view from afar -- until now.

More than two-thirds of the recent rapid melting of the world's glaciers can be blamed on humans, a new study finds.

Scientists looking at glacier melt since 1851 didn't see a human fingerprint until about the middle of the 20th century. Even then only one-quarter of the warming wasn't from natural causes.

Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga likened the impact of climate change on Pacific island nations to "a weapon of mass destruction" Friday, saying strong global leadership on the issue was needed.

Sopoaga said a U.N.-sponsored summit on climate change in New York next month was a chance to set the scene for real progress in the quest to seal a global pact on greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2015.

Antarctic minke whales engage in an underwater feeding frenzy, filling their huge mouths up to 100 times an hour as they gorge on prawn-like krill during the summer, new research showed Friday.

The Australian Antarctic Division said it was the first time that the feeding behaviour of the animals under the sea ice had been recorded, and the frenetic pace of the activity was unexpected.

A stash of buried bones in Brazil has allowed scientists to identify a new species of flying dinosaur that soared in the skies 66 to 100 million years ago, a study said Wednesday.

The remains of at least 47 individual flying reptiles were found in an old lake deposit on the outskirts of Cruzeiro do Oeste in the southern state of Parana.

India's top court on Wednesday accused the new Hindu nationalist government of failing to move on its promise to clean up the sewage-ridden, sacred river Ganges.

The Supreme Court urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government to deliver a road map on its highly-publicized pledge to restore the Ganges, which is revered by Hindus and is believed to cleanse sins.

Dolphins often squeal when they get a fish treat, sounding much like happy children.

U.S. researchers said Wednesday they believe these calls are not just ways of signaling to others in the group that there is food around, but expressions of pure delight.