A Friday report from BBC has revealed that Russia has received a formal invitation from Europe for participation in financially-plagued unmanned space missions to Mars scheduled for a 2016 and 2018 timeline --- the first mission to put a satellite in orbit for observing the Martian atmosphere; and the second for landing a robot rover on the surface of the Red planet.

US space agency NASA has signed a deal with Virgin Galactic to charter a full suborbital flight, along with options for two additional flights.

The $4.5 million deal will allow NASA scientists to perform up to 1,300lbs of experiments in each mission.

In what apparently will be the most daring missions ever undertaken for studying the Sun's behaviour, the European Space Agency (ESA) has officially adopted the Solar Orbiter mission, under which the spacecraft will be launched in 2017.

The spectacular images that were clicked by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory Satellite (SDO) early last year, and released recently, offer some stunning details of the Sun --- clearly showing the Sun’s boiling inner workings in a manner that could never have been detected by the human eye.

During the past week, NASA has detected massive solar flares being released by a sunspot which is 62,000 miles across --- with experts saying that the gigantic flares carry the theoretical potential of devastating electrical communications, ranging from certain sections of power grid to handheld electronic devices like the iPhone.

Mystery shrouds NASA’s defunct Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) that recently crashed to the Earth --- neither has the exact pre-entry time of the satellite been determined nor is there any clue about the precise location where one tonne of the space debris has landed! And, experts are of the opinion that this mystery may never be solved!