NASA wants its moon dust and cockroaches back.

The space agency has asked Boston-based RR Auction to halt the sale of moon dust collected during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission that had subsequently been fed to cockroaches during an experiment to determine if the lunar rock contained any sort of pathogen that posed a threat to terrestrial life.

NASA said Thursday it has finished testing its huge moon rocket and will move it back to the launch pad in late August.

A date for the first flight will be set after a leak that popped up during a dress rehearsal is fixed, the space agency said.

Scientists are about to get a new look at Mars, thanks to a multicolored 5.6-gigapixel map. Covering 86% of the Red Planet's surface, the map reveals the distribution of dozens of key minerals. By looking at mineral distribution, scientists can better understand Mars' watery past and can prioritize which regions need to be studied in more depth.

The first portions of this map were released by NASA's Planetary Data System. Over the next six months, more will be released, completing one of the most detailed surveys of the Martian surface ever made.

Last Saturday, a two-seater SIAI-Marchetti S.211 jet took off from Essendon Fields Airport in Melbourne with an expert aerobatic pilot at the controls and a case full of scientific experiments in the passenger seat.

Pilot Steve Gale took the jet on Australia's first commercial "parabolic flight", in which the plane flies along the path of a freely falling object, creating a short period of weightlessness for everyone and everything inside.

Parabolic flights are often a test run for the zero-gravity conditions of space. This one was operated by Australian space company Beings Systems, which plans to run regular commercial flights in coming years.

As Australia's space program begins to take off, flights like these will be in high demand.

What was on the plane?

The experiments aboard the flight were small packages developed by space science students at RMIT University.