A fridge-sized robot lab hurtling through the Solar System aboard a European probe is about to wake from hibernation and prepare for the first-ever landing by a spacecraft on a comet.

The European Space Agency has launched an advanced telescope designed to detect a billion stars and provide the most detailed map yet of the Milky Way and our place in it.

Astronomers have discovered a new planet about the same size as Jupiter, it was announced today.

The tsunami that killed more than 150,000 around the Indian Ocean was caught by a series of radar satellites, allowing National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists to develop measurements of the wave in mid-ocean.