The United States and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced an agreement Sunday that would allow the two nations to collaborate on matters of space and aeronautics research, including the potential journey to Mars. [...] The two countries also announced that they would collaborate on education and public outreach.

"Yours will be a future where human beings, as President Obama has said, have pushed farther into the universe, not just to visit but also to stay. To me, public diplomacy and cooperation in space go together like peanut butter and jelly," Bolden said. 

When I finally finished my Ph.D. program after 11 years of training for a research career in the biomedical sciences, I couldn’t help feeling that something was missing. I grew up convinced that science was the best tool we had to improve the world... Then I learned about science diplomacy.

Making the case for an economic return on investment in science can be difficult, but space exploration drives innovative thought and pushes the government and industry to develop new technologies, many of which ultimately find their way into the consumer market, according to a comprehensive study of the US space program by the National Research Council. And continued US leadership in space is a useful demonstration of soft power, the NRC found.

No wonder NASA is looking up. It just awarded contracts, worth up to $6.8 billion, to Boeing and SpaceX to carry astronauts back and forth to the International Space Station, ending our reliance on the Russians for travel services in space. The deal sets the scene for a new and exciting chapter in American space travel at a time when Americans need a "boost. 

The United Nations General Assembly may approve a plan soon for the world's space agencies to defend the Earth against asteroids. The plan, introduced last week, is expected to be adopted by the General Assembly in December. It would do two things: create an International Asteroid Warning Network so countries can share what they know about asteroids; and spin up a group of scientists from several countries' space agencies to look for smaller asteroids, as well as make plans to divert them away from the Earth.

It was the other guy’s fault, no question. That’s pretty much the explanation for why a major science conference scheduled for December came close to being torpedoed. Astronomers from all over the world were planning to gather at NASA’s Ames Research Center, in Mountain View, California, to talk about new results coming from the planet-hunting Kepler mission.