NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has landed robotic explorers on the surface of Mars, sent probes to outer planets and operates a worldwide network of antennas that communicates with interplanetary spacecraft.

Its latest mission is defending itself in a workplace lawsuit filed by a former computer specialist who claims he was demoted — and then let go — for promoting his views on intelligent design, the belief that a higher power must have had a hand in creation because life is too complex to have developed through evolution alone.

F. Sherwood Rowland, the Nobel prize-winning chemist who sounded the alarm on the thinning of the Earth's ozone layer and crusaded against the use of man-made chemicals that were harming earth's atmospheric blanket, has died. He was 84.

Rowland died Saturday at his home in Corona del Mar of complications from Parkinson's disease, the dean of the University of California, Irvine's physical sciences department said Sunday.

China may send its first woman into space this year after including female astronauts in the team training for its first manned space docking, state media said Monday.

Three astronauts will blast off on board Shenzhou ("Divine Vessel") IX between June and August to conduct a manual docking with the Tiangong-1 module currently orbiting the Earth, Xinhua news agency said, quoting an official with China's manned space program.

Plant scientists on Sunday said they had bred a strain of wheat that thrives in saline soils, boosting the quest to feed Earth's growing population at a time of water stress and climate change.

Durum wheat with a salt-loving gene had yields which were up to 25 percent greater than ordinary counterparts, according to trials carried out in highly saline fields.

The Greenland ice sheet is more sensitive to global warming than thought, for just a relatively small -- but very long term --temperature rise would melt it completely, according to a study published on Sunday.

Previous research has suggested it would need warming of at least 3.1 degrees Celsius (5.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, in a range of 1.9-5.1 C (3.4-9.1 F), to totally melt the ice sheet.

When Manuel Montesa takes sheep out to forage in mountains in northern Spain, he must bring water for them because streams near his town have run dry.

Like the rest of Spain, his home region of Aragon is suffering its worst drought in decades. It has left crops struggling to grow, caused pastures to dry up and forced farmers to leave land untilled.

Scientists on Thursday launched a mission to the seabed off Japan where a massive quake triggered last year's devastating tsunami, to get their first proper look at the buckled ocean floor.

Researchers from Germany and Japan are sending high-tech vehicles to probe the seabed up to 7,000 meters (23,000 feet) below the surface where the massive seismic shock hit last March.

A solar storm shook the Earth's magnetic field early Friday, but scientists said they had no reports of any problems with electrical systems.

After reports Thursday of the storm fizzling out, a surge of activity prompted space weather forecasters to issue alerts about changes in the magnetic field.

Some bees love a good adventure while others prefer to hang out at the hive, and a new analysis of bee brains suggests some of the same chemicals that affect human personality could explain why.

Honey bees are known to have a structured society in which different bees serve different tasks -- some work as nurses while others forage for food, for example.

U.S. and Chinese researchers have found the oldest evidence of iridescent black feathers in Microraptor, a dinosaur the size of a small crow that perched in forest tree branches 130 million years ago.

Scientists think the glossy plumes may have helped the small, meat-eating dinosaur signal its good health and suitability as a mate to others, much the way fancy colors serve birds of our era.