Indian rocket Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) will put into orbit on Sunday two foreign satellites - NovaSAR and S1-4 - together weighing 889 kg, said a top official.

In a breakthrough move, British scientists have used natural sunlight to convert water into hydrogen and oxygen by mixing biological components and man-made technologies.

The duration of India's proposed maiden manned space mission in 2021-2022 and the number of astronauts who will be on board are yet to be decided, an ISRO official said on Wednesday.

 India's first manned space flight - Gaganyaan - is expected to send three persons into the space for seven days and the spacecraft will be placed in a low earth orbit of 300-400 km.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the youngest member of the "Great Observatory" programme, has completed 15 years in space.

There's reason to be optimistic about Mars Opportunity rover that has been silent since June 10, after getting caught in a massive dust storm on the Red Planet that cut off solar power for the nearly 15-year-old rover, NASA said in a statement.

A so-called "foreign object debris" spotted by Mars rover Curiosity and speculated to be a piece of spacecraft debris has turned out to be a very thin flake of rock, NASA has said.

US scientists have predicted a fundamental asymmetry in the mechanism of water, which had previously gone unnoticed.