The sun is set to “flip upside down” within weeks as its magnetic field reverses polarity in an event that will send ripple effects throughout the solar system.

Asteroids like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth could have shot life to Mars or the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, US scientists have said.

NZ Science Media Centre staff and their Oz counterparts put together their 10 top picks for the world's biggest science stories of 2013.

Comet ISON, once optimistically called the comet of the century, is dead, the victim of a brush with the sun that was way too close. It was barely a year old.

A Japanese construction company is proposing to solve the energy problems facing Japan, and ultimately the entire planet, by turning the moon into a solar power plant.

Once billed as the comet of the century, Comet ISON apparently was no match for the sun.

Comet ISON is teasing the solar system as it dances with the sun and it's giving astronomers mixed signals.

For months, all eyes in the sky have pointed at the comet that's zooming toward a blisteringly close encounter with the sun.

A visiting comet could disintegrate when it runs a scorching gauntlet past the sun, treating star-gazers to a flashy spectacle.

The Maven spacecraft blasted off aboard an unmanned rocket from Cape Canaveral this morning NZT). It will take Maven 10 months to reach Mars following a journey of more than 440 million miles.

NASA hopes its newest Mars spacecraft lives up to its know-it-all name.

The European Space Agency says one of its research satellites re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on an orbit that passed over Siberia, the western Pacific Ocean, the eastern Indian Ocean and Antarctica.

The European Space Agency says its GOCE research satellite will crash to Earth on Sunday night or during the day on Monday, but debris is unlikely to cause any casualties.

A one-tonne satellite operated by the European Space Agency has run out of fuel and will fall back to Earth in an unknown location sometime in the next few days.

Scientists studying the terrifying meteor that exploded without warning over a Russian city last winter say the threat of space rocks smashing into Earth is bigger than they thought.

The Curse of Mars also applies to Asian countries, writes Gwynne Dyer. About two-thirds of the attempted missions to Mars have failed, many of them even before leaving Earth's orbit.

Space is vast, but it may not be so lonely after all: A study finds the Milky Way is teeming with billions of planets that are about the size of Earth, orbit stars just like our sun, and exist in the Goldilocks zone.

India is aiming to join the world's deep-space pioneers with a journey to Mars that it hopes will showcase its technological ability to explore the solar system while seeking solutions for everyday problems on Earth.

An Iranian newspaper is reporting that the Islamic Republic plans to send another monkey into space within a month.

Astronomers say they have found a lonely planet outside the solar system floating alone in space and not orbiting a star.

NASA's Jupiter-bound spacecraft hit a snag soon after it used Earth as a gravity slingshot to hurtle toward the outer solar system, but mission managers said it's on course to arrive at the giant planet in 2016.

Some prominent American astronomers are boycotting a meeting on exoplanets because Nasa has banned Chinese scientists from attending.

A Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russians and an American lifted off today from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, soaring into the night sky for a six-hour trip to the International Space Station.

Japan successfully launched a new rocket Saturday that it hopes will be a cheaper and more efficient way of sending satellites into space.