KOROLYOV, Russia, Oct 16, 2007 (AFP) - Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) recounted Tuesday how they tucked into Malaysian home cooking to mark the end of Ramadan this weekend.

"I shared my Malaysian food with the crew. I'm happy and I'm glad that they liked my food and I feel at home," said Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, the first Malaysian in space, in a video link-up with mission control outside Moscow.

HYDERABAD, India, Sept 30, 2007 (AFP) - India has won a European vote of confidence as it competes with China to tap a space market expected to generate 145 billion dollars of orders over 10 years, officials say.

Rocket operator Arianespace will market Indian space launchers and Astrium, an arm of the European Aeronautics Defence and Space Company, will promote Indian-made satellites, the two space giants announced at a conference last week.

HYDERABAD, India, Sept 30, 2007 (AFP) - Spacefaring nations are accelerating their quest to solve the mysteries of the moon, 35 years after the last human landing, and use it as a springboard to explore planets beyond.

Lunar missions dominated the international astronautics congress in Hyderabad, southern India, where 2,500 delegates gathered for five days ending Friday to discuss inter-planetary space travel.

PARIS, Sept 30, 2007 (AFP) - The United States has pledged to colonize the Moon by 2020 and send astronauts to Mars, but many scientists say dangerous and costly manned space missions should be a thing of the past, not the future.

Intelligent robots and satellites such as those already exploring the Red Planet, they say, do a good job and are a lot less fragile than human organisms too easily stranded millions of miles from home.

PASADENA, California, Sept 30, 2007 (AFP) - Fifty years after the launch of Sputnik left the United States scrambling to play catch-up in the first Space Race, US scientists fear history may be repeating itself as Asia emerges as the rising force in space exploration.

While the achievements of space programs run by China, Japan and India are modest in comparison to the milestones set by the United States and former Soviet Union, experts at a recent conference in Pasadena believe it is only a matter of time before Asia leads the field.

LAS CRUCES, New Mexico, Sept 30, 2007 (AFP) - A dusty launchpad in a remote region of New Mexico could become one of the first gateways to the heavens for private individuals clamoring to be the pioneer generation of space tourists.

If British billionaire Richard Branson's vision is realised, by 2010, tourists could be paying around 200,000 dollars to board 'SpaceShipTwo' and be rocketed into space to experience weightlessness before returning to earth.

PASADENA, California, Sept 30, 2007 (AFP) - The distorted beeps transmitted back to Earth from Sputnik on its maiden voyage acted as the starting pistol in the Cold War battle for supremacy that became known as the Space Race.

But while NASA was eventually to triumph in the scramble to place a man on the Moon when Neil Armstrong took his one small step in 1969, the mood among US scientists had been shrouded in gloom 12 years earlier.

MOSCOW, Sept 30, 2007 (AFP) - Russia's space machines may have a clunky look but they are reliable and today these workhorses are underpinning a revival of Moscow's ambitions after the financial collapse of the 1990s.

As Russia commemorates the 50th anniversary on Thursday of the launch of Sputnik 1 and the start of the Space Race, there is a sense of cautious optimism among its space scientists, says Igor Lysov, an expert with monthly magazine Space Industry News.

Next year, state spending on space is projected to equal about 1.5 billion dollars (one billion euros).

MOSCOW, Sept 30, 2007 (AFP) - Wavery and high-pitched, the beep-beep signal picked up on Earth signalled the dawn of a new era.

Thursday marks the 50th anniversary of the Soviet Union's launch, on October 4, 1957, of Sputnik 1, the starting signal for the Space Race and a propaganda coup that Russia's present leaders can only envy.

The launch of the world's first man-made satellite, a silvery orb with four frond-like antennae and two radio transmitters, was at first obscure.

MOSCOW, Sept 28, 2007 (AFP) - Computer game developer Richard Garriott, son of the former astronaut Owen Garriott, will rocket to the stars as the next space tourist, the Space Adventures company said Friday.

'We need to be adventurous in mind and stimulate our intellects to answer today's most daunting scientific questions and to invent tomorrow's technological marvels,' said Garriott, creator of the popular Ultima Online computer game.

Garriott has already begun training for the flight, which is scheduled for October 2008, Space Adventures said in a statement.

WASHINGTON, Sept 27, 2007 (AFP) - The US space agency NASA on Thursday launched the space probe Dawn on its eight-year mission to unlock the secrets of the solar system by studying the two largest asteroids orbiting the sun.

The unmanned spacecraft successfully lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida and began its 1.7 billion mile (three billion kilometer) journey to Ceres and Vesta in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Dawn's long-haul to Vesta is expected to take four years, as NASA anticipates its arrival in orbit around Vesta in October 2011.

WASHINGTON, Sept 27, 2007 (AFP) - The US space agency on Thursday launched the space probe Dawn on an eight-year mission to learn about the two largest asteroids orbiting the sun, according to NASA televised images.

The liftoff of the unmanned probe took place at 7:34 am (1134 GMT) at the US Air Force base in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Dawn is to head toward Vesta and Ceres in a bid to unlock the secrets of the solar system's creation.

MOSCOW, Sept 27, 2007 (AFP) - A Russian general warned on Thursday against other countries trying to dominate space by deploying weapons there, in comments partly aimed at the United States.

'We don't want to fight in space but on the other hand we will not permit any other country to lord it over the cosmos,' General Vladimir Popovkin was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying.

Popovkin, the military's officer responsible for space issues, said that any deployment of weapons in space would have 'the most dangerous consequences.'

HYDERABAD, India, Sept 27, 2007 (AFP) - Japan plans to carry out two more missions to the moon and then collaborate internationally to put a man on the lunar surface, a Japanese space scientist said Thursday.

Asia's biggest economy this month successfully launched Kaguya (or Selene), its first lunar orbiter, stealing a march over China and India which are planning unmanned missions of their own to the moon.

HYDERABAD, India, Sept 26, 2007 (AFP) - China plans to set up a lunar base after 2020, capping a series of preparatory robotic missions and a human landing on the moon, a Chinese space official said here Wednesday.

The Chang'e 1 lunar probe is now at the launch site and undergoing final tests ahead of its scheduled launch before the end of 2007, said Ji Wu, director of China's Centre for Space Science and Applied Research.

HYDERABAD, India, Sept 26, 2007 (AFP) - Arianespace plans to market two Indian space rockets, the chief executive said Wednesday, in a potential boost to the South Asian nation offering commercial satellite launch services.

India has developed two launch systems -- the PSLV capable of putting satellites of up to 1.6 tonnes in orbit and the GSLV that can launch payloads weighing between two tonnes and three tonnes.

HYDERABAD, India, Sept 26, 2007 (AFP) - Partners in the international space station are arguing about when to shut it even though the orbital platform, billed as the most successful joint space endeavour, is not fully assembled.

The United States insists it will pull out of the station at the end of 2015 while Russia wants its life prolonged, said European Space Agency (ESA) chief Jean-Jacques Dordain at an astronautics congress in Hyderabad, southern India.

BRUSSELS, Sept 25, 2007 (AFP) - European Commission plans to bail out the European Union's troubled Galileo satellite network have already got a cold reception less than a week after being unveiled, EU officials said Tuesday.

The Commission proposed last Wednesday to tap into the bloc's joint budget to come up with the extra 2.4 billion euros (3.4 billion dollars), required to fund Europe's answer to the United States' popular GPS in the 2008-2013 period.

HYDERABAD, India, Sept 25, 2007 (AFP) - Astrium, a unit of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, announced Tuesday that India's space agency will assemble satellites for some launch customers under a new tie-up.

The Bangalore, southern India-based Indian Space Research Organisation will build two satellites, one for France-based Eutelsat to be launched by Astrium in the last quarter of 2008, and the other for Britain's Avanti due for lift-off in 2009.

HYDERABAD, India, Sept 25, 2007 (AFP) - Space experts from around the world assembled in this southern Indian city on Tuesday to look back 50 years to the launch of the first artificial satellite and pay tribute to the pioneers of the space age.

The launch of Sputnik-1 on October 4, 1957, by the Soviet Union amazed the world, spurred the United States to set up NASA and triggered the Cold War space race.

HYDERABAD, India, Sept 25, 2007 (AFP) - Asian giants Japan, China and India are engaged in a race to map lunar resources and make the moon a platform to explore planets beyond, amid a renewed burst of global space activity.

Japan flagged off the Asian lunar race on September 14 when it successfully launched its first lunar orbiter. China plans to launch its own moon probe before the end of the year, followed by India in the first half of 2008.

WASHINGTON, Sept 24, 2007 (AFP) - Microbes that cause salmonella came back from spaceflight even more virulent and dangerous in an experiment aboard the US space shuttle Atlantis, according to a study published on Monday.

The experiment by microbiologists at Arizona State University sent tubes with salmonella bacteria on a shuttle flight in September 2006 to measure how space flight might affect disease-causing microbes.

WASHINGTON, Sept 24, 2007 (AFP) - The US space agency is set to launch on Thursday the space probe Dawn on an eight-year mission to unlock the secrets of the solar system and how it was born.

After several delays in recent months, NASA said Sunday it is finally ready to launch the unmanned craft on its mission to Ceres and Vesta, the two largest asteroids orbiting the sun, in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

AMSTERDAM, Sept 24, 2007 (AFP) - The European polar satellite MetOp-A, launched last year, is already improving weather predictions and will soon help global environmental and security monitoring, scientists said here Monday.

Scientists from Europe and the United States met in Amsterdam for a joint conference of the European meteorological satellites EUMETSAT and the American Meteorological Society, to discuss their experiences.

WASHINGTON, Sept 24, 2007 (AFP) - NASA on Monday announced it was delaying until Thursday the launch of the space probe Dawn on its eight-year mission aimed at unlocking the mysteries of the origins of our solar system.

Dawn was initially supposed to lift off on Wednesday but would now do so on Thursday due to weather concerns, NASA said in a statement.

'Weather prevented technicians from completing the loading of fuel on the Delta rocket's second stage,' NASA said.

Liftoff is now expected between 7:20 am and 7:49 am (1120 GMT to 1149 GMT) on Thursday.

AMSTERDAM, Sept 24, 2007 (AFP) - The European polar satellite MetOp-A, launched last year, is already improving weather predictions and will soon help global environmental and security monitoring, scientists said here Monday.

Scientists from Europe and the United States met in Amsterdam for a joint conference of the European meteorological satellites EUMETSAT and the American Meteorological Society, to discuss their experiences.

HYDERABAD, India, Sept 24, 2007 (AFP) - NASA aims to put a man on Mars by 2037, the administrator of the US space agency indicated here Monday.

This year marks the half-century of the space age ushered in by the October 1957 launch of the Sputnik-1 by the then Soviet Union, NASA administrator Michael Griffin noted.

In 2057, the centenary of the space era, 'we should be celebrating 20 years of man on Mars,' Griffin told an international astronautics congress in this southern Indian city where he outlined NASA's future goals.

HYDERABAD, India, Sept 24, 2007 (AFP) - Global space scientists gathered here Monday heard a call from India to join forces to push the boundaries of technology further and tap the resources of the universe.

New Delhi plans to undertake 60 outer-space missions, including one to the moon, over the next five years, said Prithviraj Chavan, a junior minister in the prime minister's office, at the opening of the meeting.

FRANKFURT, Sept 24, 2007 (AFP) - The struggling European navigation system Galileo faces yet another delay with a three-month postponement of its second satellite launch, a press report said Monday.

'The forecast launch of the second satellite in December will now be held in March 2008,' a spokesman for the launch company Arianespace was quoted by the Financial Times Deutschland as saying.

Problems with the Russian rocket Soyuz which is to place the Giove-B satellite in geo-stationary orbit were responsible for the latest setback, the newspaper reported.

BEIJING, Sept 24, 2007 (AFP) - China will build a fourth rocket launch centre to help realise its increasing space ambitions, state media reported Monday.

The new centre will be located at Wenchang on the sub-tropical southern island of Hainan, the China Daily newspaper said, citing final plans for the project.

'The 20-square-kilometre (7.7-square-mile) complex will include a command centre, a space launching port, a rocket assembly plant, a rocket launching base and a theme park,' it said.

HYDERABAD, India, Sept 24, 2007 (AFP) - Fifty years after the launch of the first satellite, key players in the global space industry were to meet here from Monday to seek new ways to benefit humanity through space exploration.

Missions to the moon and Mars, the completion of an international space station by 2010 and efforts to ward off earth-threatening asteroids and natural disasters through space technology top the week-long agenda.

HYDERABAD, India, Sept 21, 2007 (AFP) - Fifty years after the launch of the first man-made satellite, the global space industry gathers in India next week to find ways to benefit humanity -- and make money in the process.

Missions to the moon and Mars, the completion of an international space station and efforts to ward off earth-threatening asteroids and natural disasters through space technology will top the agenda.

WASHINGTON, Sept 21, 2007 (AFP) - A NASA spacecraft found seven possible cave entrances on Mars, triggering interest in hunting for other caverns that might be hiding life on the Red Planet, the US space agency said Friday.

While the possible caves discovered are too high in altitude to host life, scientists say caverns elsewhere on the Red Planet could be underground habitats or even one day become shelters for astronauts.

MOSCOW, Sept 21, 2007 (AFP) - The head of the Russian space agency Roskosmos said on Friday he hoped a new spacecraft launch site would be built in the Russian far east by 2020 to supplement the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

In comments carried by Interfax news agency, Roskosmos' head, Anatoly Perminov, also said India had applied to become a full member of the International Space Station (ISS) programme.

Perminov said that Russia would need a new launch site partly so it can launch a new type of manned spacecraft, which is still to be developed.

STAR CITY , Russia, Sept 20, 2007 (AFP) - Malaysia's soon-to-be first astronaut Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor said on Thursday he hoped to fast aboard the International Space Station as he visits there in the holy month of Ramadan.

Muszaphar, who is expected to travel to the ISS aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket on October 10, acknowledged that following the normal prayer regime might be difficult, but said that Islam was a 'lenient' religion and compatible with space travel.

BANGALORE, India, Sept 20, 2007 (AFP) - An Indian rocket may lift an Israeli spy satellite into orbit within days in the second deal to grab a share of the 2.5-billion-dollar global launch market, officials and reports said Thursday.

The Jerusalem Post said on Thursday that the launch of the 300-kilogramme (660-pound) Tecsar, Israel's most advanced satellite, could take place by the end of the week.

India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle is to take the device into space.

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 20, 2007 (AFP) - Malaysia's first astronaut will blast off into space next month armed with guidelines from Muslim authorities on how to pray, wash and even be 'buried' in space.

Two Malaysian candidates, a doctor and an army dentist who are both Muslims, are undergoing training in Russia with the winner expected to be announced on Friday, ahead of the 11-day space mission which starts on October 10.

MIAMI, Sept 19, 2007 (AFP) - Former US astronaut Lisa Nowak on Wednesday asked a Florida court to throw out key evidence she claims was obtained illegally when she was arrested for allegedly attacking a romantic rival.

Nowak, 44, had driven halfway across the United States allegedly to carry out the attack, wearing a diaper to avoid having to make restroom stops.