An amphibious plane carrying former US Republican Senator Ted Stevens crashed into a remote mountainside during a fishing trip, killing Alaska's most beloved political figure and four others and stranding the survivors on a rocky, brush-covered slope overnight.

The Hubble Space Telescope will eventually become useless, as Nasa switches the focus to President George Bush's plans to send humans to the moon, Mars and beyond.

AFTER seven months of interplanetary travel, the search for life on Mars begins. NASA’s Mars rover, Spirit, rolled to a full stop on the surface of the red planet early yesterday morning.

SCIENTISTS are a step closer to discovering if there is life on Mars after stunning images of the red planet were beamed back to Earth.

DISCLOSED e-mails inside NASA showed senior engineers worried a day before the Columbia disaster that the shuttle’s left wing might burn off and cause the deaths of the crew, a scenario remarkably similar to the one investigators believe actually occurred.