Though Moscow was once at the forefront of space travel—it sent the first man into space—its cosmic ambitions have dimmed thanks to poor financing and endemic corruption.

It has been eclipsed by China and the United States, which have both clocked major wins in space exploration and research in recent years.

The Russian space agency Roscomos said in a statement that it had signed an agreement with China's National Space Administration (CNSA) to develop a "complex of experimental research facilities created on the surface and/or in the orbit of the Moon".

The CNSA, for its part, said that the project was "open to all interested countries and international partners" in what experts said would be China's biggest international space cooperation project to date.

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in France and one in Japan has found that an achondrite found in Algeria (in the Saharan desert) last year dates back to just 2 million years after the birth of the solar system. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their study of the rock and what they learned about it.

Achondrites are types of meteorites that were once part of a protoplanet. To reach Earth, the planet to which they once belonged would have been shattered during a collision with another body.

Solar physicists have been having a field day of late. A variety of missions have been staring at the sun more intently ever before (please don't try it at home). From the Parker Solar Probe to the Solar Orbiter, we are constantly collecting more and more data about our stellar neighbor. But it's not just the big-name missions that can collect useful data—sometimes information from missions as simple as a sounding rocket make all the difference.

That was the case for a group of scientists focused on the sun's chromosphere, the part of the sun's atmosphere between the photosphere and the corona that is one of the least understood parts of the star. Now, with data collected from three different missions simultaneously, humanity has its first layered view of how the sun's magnetic field works in this underexplored zone.

One well-understood fact of the chromosphere is how much it screwed up magnetic field models of the photosphere and corona. Understanding the sun's magnetic fields is crucially important to understanding "space weather" more generally, and how it might affect conditions on Earth.

mprovising new stuff from the stuff you have is part of an astronaut's job description—think Apollo 13's crew refitting CO₂ filters to save their own lives, or stranded Mark Watney in The Martian, feeding himself on the Red Planet. Now plans are underway to manufacture items in orbit, and ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst argues this could make a big difference to living and working in space.

Alexander—who has spent just under a year in orbit, becoming the second European to command the International Space Station (ISS) – spoke at ESA's Workshop on Advanced Manufacturing, which included a special session on out-of-Earth manufacturing.

While plastic-producing 3D printers have already reached space, the virtual event heard how ESA will fly the first metal 3D printer in 2022, and researchers are also planning large-scale manufacturing such as spacecraft printing their own antennas or solar arrays after launch.