A new way to use plutonium for power could help NASA explore the solar system, and should be flight tested as soon as possible, a new report says.

The author looks at an ambitious Japanese proposal to install solar panels on the moon's surface and beam the resulting solar energy to stations on the earth.

Under a new five-year plan unveiled in December, China will continue to make methodical progress in human spaceflight, expand its satellite navigation system, explore the moon and seek space technology partnerships with developing nations.

Broadening its challenge to the United States, the Chinese government on Thursday announced an ambitious five-year plan for space exploration that would move China closer to becoming a major rival at a time when the American program is in retreat.

There is so much junk in space that collisions could start to increase exponentially, leading to a continuously growing pile of rubble in orbit, a new report warns. But while the dangers posed by growing orbital detritus are increasing, NASA's budget and management structure has not kept pace, the new report found.

Two new studies propose potential spacecraft missions that would collide with asteroids in an attempt to deflect them away from our planet. Such missions, some researchers say, may be among our best hopes to ward off asteroids that may pose a threat to Earth.

Solar flares like the huge one that erupted on the sun early today (Aug. 9) will only become more common as our sun nears its maximum level of activity in 2013, scientists say.

Billions of tons of resources, ranging from water to gases to metals, have been detected on the Moon and further out into space, and both governments and private companies are navigating the ambiguous legal parlance to determine how to reach, extract and distribute it all.

Scientists and officials from a range of organizations gathered in Washington, D.C. to discuss plans for dealing with massive solar flares that could disrupt modern communications infrastructure. "A similar storm today might knock us for a loop," Lika Guhathakurta, a solar physicist at NASA headquarters, said. "Modern society depends on high-tech systems such as smart power grids, GPS and satellite communications — all of which are vulnerable to solar storms."

Dealing with the decades of detritus from using outer space -- human-made orbital debris -- is a global concern, but some experts are now questioning the feasibility of the wide range of "solutions" sketched out to grapple with high-speed space litter, arguing that it may be too late.