Sea urchins in Israel's Gulf of Eilat have been dying off at an alarming rate, researchers announced Wednesday — a development that threatens the Red Sea's prized coral reef ecosystems.

According to Tel Aviv University scientists, an unknown pathogen is killing off the black sea urchin, Diadema setosum. The massive die-off first began in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, from where it has spread to the neighboring Red Sea, the scientists said.

Saudi Arabia's first astronauts in decades rocketed toward the International Space Station on a chartered multimillion-dollar flight Sunday.

SpaceX launched the ticket-holding crew, led by a retired NASA astronaut now working for the company that arranged the trip from Kennedy Space Center. Also on board: a U.S. businessman who now owns a sports car racing team.

After decades on the sidelines, African countries are venturing into the space industry, hoping to reap rewards in agriculture, disaster prevention and security.

A Japanese company's spacecraft apparently crashed while attempting to land on the moon Wednesday, losing contact moments before touchdown and sending flight controllers scrambling to figure out what happened.

More than six hours after communication ceased, the Tokyo company ispace finally confirmed what everyone had suspected, saying there was "a high probability" that the lander had slammed into the moon.

A Japanese company is about to attempt what no other private business has done: land on the moon.

Tokyo's ispace company put its own spacecraft into orbit around the moon a month ago. On Tuesday, flight controllers will direct the craft, named Hakuto, Japanese for white rabbit, to descend from 60 miles (100 kilometers) high and land.

A spacecraft around Mars has sent back the most detailed photos yet of the red planet's little moon.

The United Arab Emirates' Amal spacecraft flew within 62 miles (100 kilometers) of Deimos last month and the close-up shots were released Monday. Amal — Arabic for Hope — got a two-for-one when Mars photobombed some of the images. It was the closest a spacecraft has been to Deimos in almost a half-century.

Under a cloudless sky, 20,000 eclipse chasers crowded a tiny outpost to watch a rare solar eclipse plunge part of Australia's northwest coast into brief midday darkness Thursday while temporarily cooling the tropical heat.

The remote tourist town of Exmouth, with fewer than 3,000 residents, was promoted as one of the best vantage points in Australia to see the eclipse that also crossed remote parts of Indonesia and East Timor.

The first image of a black hole captured four years ago revealed a fuzzy, fiery doughnut-shaped object. Now, researchers have used artificial intelligence to give that cosmic beauty shot a touch-up.

The updated picture, published Thursday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, keeps the original shape, but with a skinnier ring and a sharper resolution.

A large asteroid will safely zoom between Earth and the Moon on Saturday, a once-in-a-decade event that will be used as a training exercise for planetary defence efforts, according to the European Space Agency.

The asteroid, named 2023 DZ2, is estimated to be 40 to 70 meters (130 to 230 feet) wide, roughly the size of the Parthenon, and big enough to wipe out a large city if it hit our planet.

Our capacity to care about others may have very, very ancient origins, a new study suggests.

It might have been deep-rooted in prehistoric animals that lived millions of years ago, before fish and mammals like us diverged on the tree of life, according to researchers who published their study Thursday in the journal Science.