An unmanned probe launched by Japan’s space agency had a successful test of its innovative solar sail propulsion system, after getting its first acceleration push from sunlight, the agency announced.

On Monday, an asteroid the size of a rock that exploded above Siberia in 1908 with the force of a thousand atomic bombs whizzed by Earth, according to astronomers.

The long-held fancy of sailing among the stars could soon become reality with one solar sail mission on the drawing board and another already on the launching pad, slated to blast off this summer.

A boxy spacecraft and its Georgia-based design team are $25,000 richer after winning an international competition to devise the best plan for tracking a space rock that will swing past Earth twice in the next 30 years. The small Foresight spacecraft designed by engineers in Georgia and California won first place on Tuesday in the Planetary Society's Apophis Mission Design Competition, which challenged contenders to come up with a cost-effective way of launching a watch dog-like probe to Asteroid 99942 Apophis. The asteroid - a space rock between 690 and 1080 feet (210 and 330 meters) wide - is expected to pass by Earth at a distance of about 18,300 miles (29,470 km) on its first pass in 2029, then swing further out at about 30 million miles (47.9 million kilometers) on the second approach in 2036, asteroid researchers have said.

By Dan Sorenson, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson Nov. 1--Affordable space travel may be far off, but Earth-dwellers can send their names to Mars for free under a program by the Planetary Society, a space advocacy program.