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The claims made by Russian media that NASA Astronaut Serena Aunon-Chancellor had a nervous breakdown and damaged a Russian spacecraft to get home are not credible, Kathy Lueders, who is leading NASA's human spaceflight program, said at a press conference on Friday. Russia's TASS recently published a story, citing an unnamed source in the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos, that claimed Aunon-Chancellor had an emotional breakdown in space and she made a microfracture in the Russian spacecraft to return early during a mission in 2018. "Absolutely," Lueders said when asked whether NASA will defend its astronaut. "Our NASA crews perform their...

In this Sept. 16, 2014 photo provided by NASA, astronaut Jeanette Epps participates in a spacewalk training session at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. In June 2018, Epps was supposed to be the first African-American to live on the International Space Station, but on Thursday, Jan. 18, 2018, NASA announced it was pulling her off the mission for undisclosed reasons. (Robert Markowitz/NASA via AP) __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ NASA has bumped an astronaut off an upcoming spaceflight, a rare move for the space agency so close to launch. Astronaut Jeanette Epps was supposed to rocket away in early June, and would have...