NASA

The method is not just faster but also cheaper than current commercial breeding techniques that use vapour lamps.

2018 is slated to be an exciting year for Nasa and its fans as the space exploration organisation has a lot of missions, updates and extensive plans scheduled across the year.

Using samples from surfaces in the space lab, unknown microbes have been collected and identified.

Nasa astronaut Joe Acaba recalled a family tradition of celebrating the New Year with his father's chilli at midnight.

The near-earth asteroid 2017 YZ4 will pass closely between the Earth and the Moon at 3.56pm on 28 December, the first known asteroid to fly by within one lunar distance this month.

Space station astronauts celebrated Christmas by watching Stars Wars The Last Jedi and opening gifts from Earth.

This star, accprding to Nasa and the European Space Agency, has completed the red giant phase of its lifetime and is ejecting gases into space.

From Nasa's Trappist1 discovery to the mysterious Oumuamua – here are the biggest and most interesting space stories of the year.

Asteroids often collide with other objects as they hurtle through space, leaving their surfaces covered in various markings and craters.

From Nasa's ambitious goal to travel to Alpha Centauri to hunt for alien life to Russia's plan to open up a luxury hotel in space – these are the best space stories of the week.

Nasa reinvented a 150-year-old technique to capture supersonic motion as well as the shockwaves of a jet.

To simulate the failure, only two of the three parachutes bundled with the mock spacecraft were deployed.

Phaethon will come within 10 million kilometres of Earth and will be visible through small telescopes in areas with low light pollution.

"This was a fantastic way to end the year for SpaceX east coast launches," Jessica Jensen, director of SpaceX's Dragon Mission Management, said.

Kepler-90i is a scorching hot, rocky planet with an average temperature that is believed to exceed 800 degrees Fahrenheit.

The movie could be sent via SpaceX's Dragon capsule which will be heading towards space station Friday.

The stars are residents of globular star cluster Messier 79, which is located as far away as 41,000 light-years from the Earth.

American astronauts will be returning to the Moon for the first time since 1972 after trump directed Nasa to start planning.

Even three months after its death, Cassini continues to provide us with new insights into the massive gas giant and its icy rings.

The Great Red Spot is one of Solar System's most famous storms measuring 16,000km across, or nearly one and half times as wide as Earth.

The historic mission will also see SpaceX attempt to launch a previously used orbit rocket and a pre-flown Dragon capsule for the first time.

Had it collided with the Earth, the impact would have obliterated life within a diameter of 6km.

From Mars to Pluto and Jupiter to the Sun, Nasa's image gallery this year is nothing short of stunning.

From the Big Bang theory being classified as just a speculation to distant galaxies possibly hiding alien worlds – these the best space stories of the week.

The historic attempt comes just months after SpaceX first relaunched a used Falcon 9 rocket booster into space in March.

After the moon was carved out of Earth, bombardments continued for millions of years and some of the debris reached the core of the planet.

As the UN oceans chief warns we are facing a 'planetary crisis', researchers are trying to replace synthetics with biodegradable fungi.

The tech, dubbed "take me home", would essentially add self-return capabilities to the spacesuit, bringing the astronaut back to a safe point.

This galaxy cluster is several thousands of times larger than the Milky Way, containing thousands of individual galaxies, packed up close.

The image was taken from a distance of 18,000km above the surface of these clouds.