Home

Russia on Wednesday sent a multinational crew of three astronauts to the International Space Station on a Soyuz rocket from its Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, US NASA astronaut Don Pettit and Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers blasted off aboard a Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft at 1316 GMT in a spectacular night-time launch from the Kazakh steppe.

The launch ...

(Reuters) - A trio of astronauts blasted off aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket on Wednesday on a mission to bring the International Space Station back up to full manpower after an August cargo launch accident disrupted flights.

The rocket carrying Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, NASA astronaut Don Pettit and the European Space Agency's Andre Kuipers lifted off at 8:16 ...

A Soyuz rocket lifted off on Friday from Europe's space base in French Guiana, placing into orbit six low-orbit satellites with military or joint military-industrial use.

It was the second-ever launch of the Russian-made rocket from the European Space Agency (ESA) pad in South America.

The 2.2-tonne payload included France's Pleiades 1 satellite, designed to generate 3-D ...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Budget cuts in a program to spur commercial space taxis will likely keep the United States dependent on Russia to fly astronauts to the International Space Station until 2017, NASA's head of space operations said on Thursday.

But the newly revamped program, intended to provide a commercial alternative following the recent retirement of NASA's ...

The US space agency is developing a high-tech harpoon that could one day pierce a comet and grab samples for scientists on Earth to study for hints about how the universe formed.

The idea borrows on a concept developed by the European Space Agency but adds a sample chamber to the spear so it can capture dust from a fast-moving ...

One of the last surviving architects of the Soviet space programme that put Yuri Gagarin into orbit half a century ago died on Wednesday, officials said. He was 99.

Boris Chertok, who helped design the country's first ballistic missiles, was a close colleague of the Soviet rocket design genius Sergei Korolyov who is widely credited for giving the USSR ...

A giant airplane that can in mid-flight launch a rocket carrying cargo and humans into orbit is the future of space travel, billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen said.

The first test flight of the ambitious venture by Allen's new company Stratolaunch Systems is not scheduled until 2015, but partners in the project vowed it would revolutionize orbital ...

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp co-founder Paul Allen is planning to build a spaceship that could replace the Space Shuttle and put paying passengers into orbit this decade.

Lifelong space enthusiast Allen is hoping to launch unmanned rockets from a massive flying carrier plane to put government and commercial satellites into space and eventually evolve to human space missions.

The initiative ...

SpaceX will fly its Dragon capsule on an unmanned mission to the International Space Station in February, marking the first-ever bid by a private company to dock at the orbiting lab, NASA said Friday.

The fly-by and berthing mission are scheduled for February 7, 2012, the US space agency said in a statement.

"SpaceX has made incredible progress over the ...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A private company will make a trial cargo run to the International Space Station in February, a key step in a new U.S. program to buy spaceflight services on a commercial basis, NASA said on Friday.

California-based Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, plans to launch a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon cargo capsule ...