The French papers are consumed with more grim economic news. Alongside climbing unemployment levels, Libération reports that the last factory of a major lingerie manufacturer is to be closed. But Les Echos say the French can be consoled: even as companies like Kodak face bankruptcy in the US, other businesses emerge. And in extra-terrestrial news, a piece of Mars lands - on Earth.
NASA ushered in the new year with a pair of probes circling the moon in preparation for the latest mission to determine what lies below the surface of Earth's closest neighbour.
Scientists working at the CERN Physics Centre in Switzerland said Tuesday that they are closing in on identifying an elementary particle, called the Higgs boson, which could help explain the mysteries of the universe's structure.
The US space agency launched on Saturday the first Martian rover in eight years, the $2.5 billion six-wheeled Curiosity, to look for signs that life may have existed on Mars. It is expected to land on the red planet in August next year.
Three astronauts were safely brought back to Earth Tuesday after spending nearly six months on the International Space Station. Their Soyuz capsule landed on the steppes of Kazakhstan shortly before sunrise.
Earth's has survived a near miss with an asteroid, after its closest fly-by in 200 years. Passing our planet by just a mere 350 miles, the 400-metre-wide rock was invisible to the naked eye.
Russia's Phobos-Grunt space probe has failed to take its planned trajectory towards Mars and is stuck in an Earth orbit, the Russian space agency said Wednesday, saying it has three days to try to regain control of the unruly craft.
The six crew members of the Mars500 experiment - a 520-day simulation of space travel to the red planet - ended their voluntary isolation on Friday, greeting eager family members and the press in Moscow.
A Chinese Long March rocket has successfully launched the Shenzhou 8 unmanned spacecraft into orbit in the latest stage of the country's plan to build a permanent space station by the end of the decade.
After a one-day delay, the Russian rocket Soyuz successfully blasted off from its base in French Guiana on Friday carrying satellites for the Galileo project, a European version of the US Global Positioning System (GPS).
