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By Ron Cowen of Nature magazine The European Space Agency (ESA) will forge ahead with ExoMars, an ambitious two-part robotic mission that would look for signs of life on the Red Planet, even though NASA has reneged on its promise to provide a launch rocket for the first stage of the mission. During a 12-13 October ESA council meeting in Paris, the agency decided to begin negotiations with Russia for a rocket that would launch the first stage of ExoMars, in 2016, in exchange for Russian participation in the mission

In June 2010, an emaciated and disorientated female Amur tiger ( Panthera tigris altaica ) named Galia wandered into the Russian town of Terney seeking any prey she was still strong enough to kill. Authorities were forced to put her down, a sad day for a subspecies that numbers maybe 250 to 300 animals in the wild. The story got worse as all three of Galia’s 3-week-old cubs were also found nearby, dead, their bellies empty

Several investors, including some notable celebrities, are banking on the spam-free search engine to compete against Bing, Yahoo, and Google. Upstart search engine Blekko has closed a $30 million funding round in its quest to be the spam-free Google. Yandex, the most popular search engine in Russia, has invested $15 million and promised to share its servers and other technology

When it comes to getting fit a person's best friend just might be a four-legged one.

The little boats are used for ocean monitoring, but could be used for much more soon, thanks to the company's new hire, former astronaut and Googler Ed Lu.

While the United States might be done with the Space Shuttle, the rest of the world is picking up the slack. Iranians are planning new space capsules, China is launching Martian satellites... and India wants to put a man on the moon

Here's a title Google isn't likely to be trumpeting anytime soon: No. 1 target of mobile hackers. Malware aimed at Android mobile devices jumped a whopping 76 percent in just three months, found a new report.

An unmanned Russian cargo ship carrying tons of supplies for astronauts on the International Space Station suffered a major malfunction after launching today (Aug. 24) and ultimately crashed back to Earth, NASA officials say

Plastic Logic's e-reader may yet live as an educational tool in Russia, just as Apple and Microsoft bid for millions of tablet PCs destined for Turkish schools. The e-education game is getting serious. Plastic Logic has just landed $150 million in investments from a state fund in Russia to bring its ill-fated soft-screened e-reader to the nation's schools.

Every northern country is making territorial claims to land being exposed under melting ice, creating a truly cold new Cold War near the North Pole. If you don't believe that the Arctic ice cap is melting, ask the Russians about it.

By David Fogarty SINGAPORE (Reuters) - In July 2010, U.S. investor Todd Lemons and Russian energy giant Gazprom believed they were just weeks from winning final approval for a landmark forest preservation project in Indonesia. [More]

We knew Virgin Galactic had hopes of using its capacious SpaceShipTwo-class reusable spaceplanes for more than just joyrides into zero-g, but NASA's new contract with the fledgling space company is a milestone for the entire business, as well as Richard Branson's wackiest venture. As Virgin notes, "this arrangement marks the first time that NASA has contracted with a commercial partner to provide flights into space on a suboribtal spacecraft." The decision came out of NASA's Office of the Chief Technologist, source of some of the most paradigm-changing pieces of news from NASA recently, and it's technically a further step in a program that's already seen NASA technology flights on low-altitude rockets

With everyone on board with Jack and Bryn's plans, the group just needs two small pieces of the puzzle: money, and a possibly insane Russian genius who lives somewhere in the woods.

High-resolution computer simulations prepared by a team of scientists from the Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw (FUW), the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute for Astrophysics in Potsdam made it possible to trace the evolution of large clouds of dark and normal matter that fill the Universe. The results confirm earlier assumptions regarding the basic features of dark matter, especially its distribution on cosmological scales.

Understanding people through direct experience has become a forgotten part of American business. Here's how strangers can and should help shape brands. As I crawled up to the 19th floor, stumbling over broken glass, old beer cans, rat droppings, and a smell that made me gag, I found my way to apartment number 19294--my home for the next two days