A Russian weather satellite has taken the highest-resolution photograph ever captured of Earth in its entirety, astronomers say. The Elektro-L is orbiting Earth on a geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles above the equator, sending photographs of the entire planet every 30 minutes, Gizmodo.com reported. are a combination of visible and near-infrared wavelengths, so they show the Earth in a way not visible to human eyes," Robert Simmon, a scientist at the NASA Earth Observatory at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said.

Dust rings around distant stars, considered by many as "smoking gun" evidence of orbiting planets, can form on their own, U.S. research suggests. The finding is possible bad news for those who use the structures to guide them to stars in their search for distant planets, and may raise questions about the existence of a controversial candidate exoplanet. "I call it the dark matter argument," Wladimir Lyra at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told NewScientist.com.

A NASA orbiting telescope has observed the first evidence of a supernova shock wave breaking through a cocoon of gas around the star, astronomers say. The findings by the Chandra X-ray Observatory may help explain why some supernova explosions are more powerful than others, a release by the Chandra group at Harvard University reported Tuesday. The supernova in a galaxy about 160 million light years from Earth was first spotted by astronomers on Nov. 3, 2010, and was one of the most luminous that has ever been detected in X-rays, the researchers said.

A partnership between two U.S. aerospace companies could eventually bring passenger trips to private space stations, officials of the companies said. SpaceX, maker of the Dragon space capsule scheduled to take crews and supplies to the International Space Station, and Bigelow Aerospace said they have formed a partnership to market flights to Bigelow's proposed private stations, looking for international customers that could include national space agencies, companies and universities, Florida Today reported Thursday. "Both companies were founded to help create a new era in space enterprise," SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said in a statement.

A Chinese rocket to be used for the launch of the country's first manned spacecraft has been delivered to a launch center in northwest China, officials said. The Long March-2F carrier rocket that will be used for the upcoming launch of the Shenzhou-9 manned spacecraft has undergone technical advancements to improve its reliability and safety, a spokesman with the country's manned space program said Thursday. Assembly and tests will be carried out on the rocket at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China's state-run news agency Xinhua reported.

The first instrument for a space telescope NASA hopes to launch in 2018 has been delivered by the European consortium that built it, officials said. The MIRI, or Mid InfraRed Instrument, was handed over to the European Space Agency at a ceremony in London Wednesday, the ESA reported from its Paris headquarters. The James Webb telescope will be an infrared space observatory with a collecting area more than two and a half times larger than ESA's Herschel Space Observatory, the largest infrared scientific telescope so far flown to space.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A private U.S. company has set a new date for launching a cargo ship to the International Space Station. It will be the first commercial cargo run to the space station. The launch of the supply ship had been scheduled for Monday but was delayed for more software testing.

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is now within 100 days of landing on the Red Planet, heading that way at 13,000 mph, the space agency said. NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, carrying the 1-ton rover, has about 119 million miles to go toward its planned arrival at Mars August 5, NASA said. "Every day is one day closer to the most challenging part of this mission," said Pete Theisinger, Mars Science Laboratory project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The space shuttle Enterprise landed in New York Friday on its way to its permanent home at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum on the Hudson River. Weather concerns had delayed the 2-hour flight from Dulles International Airport near Washington for several days, collectSPACE.com reported. Enterprise, which never went into space but made several approach and landing tests in the late 1970s, had been a part of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's collection since November 1985.

The space shuttle Discovery arrived at its new home, the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, Thursday with a public ceremony, NASA said. The retired orbiter, which completed 39 missions and spent more than 365 days in space, is being moved into the national aerospace collection at the museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia, the agency reported. "NASA and the Smithsonian signed an agreement in 1967 that has enabled the National Air and Space Museum to preserve and display the greatest icons of our nation's space history," Gen. J.R. "Jack" Dailey, director of the museum, said in a statement.

Engineers began blasting a home for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) on a mountaintop in Chile on Friday. Meanwhile, back in Tucson, the second of two giant mirrors being cast for the GMT is still cooling in a furnace beneath Arizona Stadium. When assembled at the Carnegie Institution's Las Campanas Observatory in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, the GMT will combine light from seven 8.4-meter mirrors to create a telescope with the collecting surface of a mirror 24.5 meters (80 feet) in diameter.

Text of report in English by official Chinese news agency Xinhua (New China News Agency) Beijing, 1 March: A leading Chinese space engineer said here Thursday that China's first unmanned space module, the Tiangong-1, is now capable of accommodating astronauts, making it possible for China to carry out its first manned space docking mission ahead of schedule. Qi Faren, the former chief designer of the Shenzhou spaceships series, spoke with Xinhua on China's space missions ahead of the annual session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the country's top political advisory body, which is slated to open Saturday.