The end of the world is just weeks away, if you believe interpretations of Mayan prophecies, and one man knows how he is going to survive it: In a giant boat.

PRISTINE comet samples returned last weekend by the Stardust spacecraft after a 4.7-billion-kilometre journey wildly exceeded scientists' expectations, project managers said.

An unmanned NASA spacecraft the size and shape of a concert piano hurtled yesterday toward Pluto on a three-billion-mile journey to the solar system’s last unexplored planet – a voyage so long that some of the scientists who will be celebrating its arrival are just taking their first physics class.

A piano-sized spacecraft tonight blasted off on a 3-billion mile journey to study Pluto, the solar system’s last unexplored planet.

Nasa scrubbed its launch of an unmanned spacecraft on a nine-year voyage to Pluto for the second day in a row today, but this time weather in Maryland was to blame.

Bad weather forced Nasa to cancel the launch of an unmanned spacecraft on a nine-year, 3-billion-mile voyage to Pluto, the solar system’s last unexplored planet.

An unmanned spacecraft the size of a piano is due to lift off tomorrow on a nine-year journey to the Pluto – the last unexplored planet in the Solar System.

Pluto has three moons, not one, new images from the Hubble Space Telescope suggest.

AMERICAN scientists have discovered what they are excitedly claiming - but others dispute - should be recognised as the 10th planet in orbit around our sun.

Astronomers say they have discovered a new planet larger than Pluto in orbit around the sun, renewing debate over what exactly is a planet and whether Pluto should keep its status.

A SPACECRAFT heading for Saturn has returned the first close-up pictures of the planet’s oddball moon, Phoebe.

American scientists were expected to announce today that they had found a new “planet” in our solar system.

Astronomers say a pair of small rocks orbiting each other at the edge of the solar system may be planets.