Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has said his country could soon send its first astronauts to the Moon in a Chinese spacecraft, hailing Thursday a scientific cooperation agreement reached with President Xi Jinping.

Maduro arrived in Beijing on Tuesday after a tour of Shanghai and other Chinese cities, meeting Xi on Wednesday and agreeing to "upgrade" ties with Beijing.

Maduro announced during his meeting with Xi on Wednesday that the two countries had agreed to train young Venezuelan astronauts in China, with plans to eventually send them to the Moon.

A special task team "on scientific, technological, industrial and aerospace cooperation will sooner rather than later (send) the first Venezuelan man and woman to the moon in a Chinese spacecraft", Maduro said.

"Very soon, Venezuelan youth will come here to prepare as astronauts in Chinese schools," he said.

NASA is set to release on Thursday the findings of a long-awaited study on unexplained flying objects in Earth's skies.

The US space agency announced last year it was reviewing evidence regarding unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs—which has replaced the term "UFO" in official parlance.

The subject has long fascinated the public but was shunned by mainstream science.

An independent team of 16 researchers shared their preliminary observations in May, finding that existing data and eyewitness reports are insufficient to draw firm conclusions, while calling for more systematic collection of high-quality data.

It's unlikely Thursday's report will change that bottom line—but it could eventually usher in the start of a new mission for the agency.

The astronaut Frank Rubio broke the record for the longest in orbit mission by an American, spending more than 355 days aboard the International Space Station.

"In some ways, it's been an incredible challenge. But in other ways, it's been an incredible blessing," Rubio said Wednesday from the ISS during a chat with NASA that was broadcast live.

Having broken the old record Monday, Rubio said he was now looking forward to reaching 365 days.

A team of engineers and technicians at Ball Aerospace, one of the industry partners for NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has finished assembling the spacecraft's giant camera. Called the Wide Field Instrument (WFI), this state-of-the-art tool will enable astronomers to explore the cosmos from the outskirts of our solar system to the edge of the observable universe.