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Following the launch of the reliable Soyuz FG rocket – along with a successful orbital insertion shortly thereafter – the Soyuz TMA-12M was immediately tasked with performing the first two engine burns on its first orbit of the Earth, which were pre-programmed into the Soyuz’s on-board computer prior to launch. ... While the crew were expected to dock to the station’s Poisk module less than six hours later at 11:04 pm, a problem during the “Dv3″ burn resulted in mission controllers opting to move to a new flight profile that will allow for Soyuz to arrive in two days time....

Explanation: With parachute deployed and retro-rockets blazing, this spacecraft landed on planet Earth on September 11 (UT) in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. Seen in silhouette against the rockets' glare, the spacecraft is a Soyuz TMA-08M. Its crew, Expedition 36 Commander Pavel Vinogradov and Flight Engineer Alexander Misurkin of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), and Flight Engineer Chris Cassidy of NASA were returning after five and half months aboard the International Space Station. The Soyuz retro-rockets fire very quickly and for an extremely short duration near touchdown. Capturing the moment, the well-timed photograph was taken...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA is paying $424 million more to Russia to get U.S. astronauts into space, and the agency's leader is blaming Congress for the extra expense. NASA announced its latest contract with the Russian Space Agency on Tuesday. The $424 million represents flights to and from the International Space Station aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft, as well as training, for six astronauts in 2016 and the first half of 2017. That's $70.6 million per seat -- well above the previous price tag of about $65 million. Russia currently provides the only means of getting people to and from...

One of two female fighter pilots will become the first Chinese woman in space later this month, after the two were shortlisted for a place in the three-person team that will blast off in the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft, the state news agency Xinhua said. Chinese media described Major Liu Yang, from Henan, as a "hero pilot" who achieved a successful emergency landing after a dramatic birdstrike incident spattered the windshield of her plane with blood. Meanwhile, her rival, Captain Wang Yaping, from Shandong, is said to have flown rescue missions during the Sichuan earthquake and piloted a cloud-seeding plane to help...

If the company SpaceX succesfully docks its Dragon capsule to the international space station, it will not only mark a new era in commercial space transportation but also provide a viable alternative for NASA to take cargo and potentially crew to the orbital outpost without using the Russian-made Soyuz capsule.

This time, a Soyuz-2 vehicle failed to put a communications satellite into orbit after lifting away from the country's Plesetsk spaceport. Debris is said to have re-entered the Earth's atmosphere near the western Siberian town of Tobolsk.

MOSCOW — A Russian Soyuz capsule carrying three astronauts returning from the International Space Station touched down safely in the snow-covered steppes of Kazakhstan early Tuesday morning. NASA astronaut Michael Fossum, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov and Satoshi Furukawa of Japan’s JAXA space agency landed at the break of dawn some 90 kilometers (56 miles) north of the town of Arkalyk at 8:26 a.m. (0226 GMT) after spending 165 days in space. The landing at steppe was close to its target point. NASA spokesman Josh Byerly said in the NASA television broadcast that the recovery operation was swift despite the freezing...

After exhaustive work to recover from a dramatic August launch failure, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut was poised for blastoff late Sunday on a delayed flight to the International Space Station, the program's first manned launching since the U.S. shuttle was retired.

A special commission investigating the causes of the August 24 failed launch of Russia's Soyuz carrier rocket has recommended enhancing the control of the production of engines for Soyuz rockets, Russian space agency Roscosmos said. A Soyuz rocket engine failure resulted in the loss of the Progress M-12M space freighter on August 24, the first loss of a Progress freighter in the history of Russia's space industry. The freighter failed to separate from the rocket and fell in South Siberia's Altai Republic. A clogged fuel supply pipe caused the engine failure, the commission discovered, describing the defect as "accidental," Roscosmos...

MOSCOW — A Russian cargo rocket ferrying three tons of food and fuel to the International Space Station broke down about five minutes after it blasted off on Wednesday, completing its flight by arcing into a Siberian forest rather than achieving orbit. The crash of the unmanned craft, a Progress cargo ship on top of a Soyuz rocket, does not pose an immediate problem for the six crew members living at the space station, who are well stocked with supplies taken there in July by NASA’s last shuttle flight. But it raises questions about the reliability of this model of...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The six space station astronauts took shelter in lifeboats Tuesday when a piece of orbiting junk came dangerously close. The unidentified object came within 1,100 feet of the space station — closer than any piece of space junk ever, said NASA's space operations chief, Bill Gerstenmaier. Mission Control ordered the astronauts into the two Russian Soyuz capsules parked at the space station Tuesday morning. NASA got just 14 hours' notice of the close approach, not nearly enough time to move the space station out of harm's way. The call to seek shelter came around 7:30 a.m....

NASA's space shuttle orbiters may not be destined for a museum in five months, after all. Agency officials are conducting a "what-if budget exercise" that could keep the orbiters potentially flight-worthy for several more years, NASA says. The option may offer a tantalizing alternative to the space shuttle workforce, who now must find new jobs before mid-year. Currently, NASA plans to retire all three orbiters - including Discovery after a scheduled flight in February, Endeavour after a planned trip in April and finally Atlantis after it returns from a scheduled launch in June. Meanwhile, NASA has asked the space industry...

Russia's Dmitry Kondratyev, NASA astronaut Catherine Coleman and the European Space Agency's Paolo Nespoli of Italy will spend five months at the space station, which has a full schedule for 2011, with the arrival of several cargo craft delivered by the U.S., Russian, European and Japanese space agencies.

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (AP) — As a Soyuz spacecraft slowly rolls to its launchpad on the icy cold steppes of Kazakhstan, even the most seasoned space fan cannot help but be spellbound by the sight. With NASA finally retiring the shuttle program next year, the venerable Russian workhorse is now set to become the world’s only lifeline to the International Space Station. That predicament is provoking mixed feelings of concern over excess reliance on Russia’s space program and enduring admiration for the hardiness of the Soviet-designed Soyuz. “The vehicle is a rugged ‘one trick pony,’ no frills or luxuries, and can...

PHOTOS OF: A Soyuz descent module carrying Russians Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Korniyenko, and NASA's Tracy Caldwell Dyson came back to Earth September 25, 2010 from the International Space Station and landed safely in Kazakhstan, a day after an initial attempt to return was aborted after latches holding the Soyuz TMA-18 craft to the orbital station failed to open.

Competitiveness: The president spent Tax Day reassuring Florida voters that money will keep flowing to NASA. But in space as well as on Earth, we'll be an unexceptional nation. In space, no one can hear you scheme. President Obama's speech at the Kennedy Space Center will never be confused with President Kennedy's clarion call in 1961 to send an American to the moon within a decade. Rather it was an admission that we will now boldly go where no one wants to go.

Achievement: The nation that put the first man on the moon may have put its last as budget cuts slash NASA's plans to return. Men will return to the moon, but they will likely speak Chinese. On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy announced in front of a joint session of Congress the dramatic and ambitious goal of sending an American to the moon by the end of that decade. It was a clarion call to the American spirit and technology to rise up and prove that America's best days were still ahead. Forty-one years after Neil Armstrong set foot on...

A former Microsoft executive blasted off into space Thursday morning with the Expedition 19 crew aboard a Russian spacecraft headed for the International Space Station. Charles Simonyi, a Hungarian native, headed up Microsoft's application software group and oversaw the creation of the ubiquitous Office applications before leaving in 2002. Simonyi joined Microsoft in Feb. 1981, and during 21 years there, he headed up early development of both Word and Excel, and worked as an architect and distinguished engineer in the Microsoft Research organization.

The first official image of a Russian-European manned spacecraft has been unveiled. It is designed to replace the Soyuz vehicle currently in use by Russia and will allow Europe to participate directly in crew transportation. The reusable ship was conceived to carry four people towards the Moon, rivalling the US Ares/Orion system. Unlike previous crewed vehicles, it will use thrusters to make a soft landing when it returns to Earth. I think the main roadmap is the agreement between the European and Russian space agencies. That is their Plan A Anatoly Zak In some respects, the capsule resembles America's next-generation...

The crew of the Soyuz capsule that landed in Kazakhstan hundreds of kilometers off-target after an unexpectedly severe descent was in serious danger, a Russian news agency reported Tuesday. Interfax quoted an unidentified space official as saying that the capsule entered the atmosphere improperly, with the hatch-first, instead of with its heat shields leading the way. As a result, the hatch suffered significant damage. The official said the TMA-11 capsule's antenna burned up during the descent, meaning the crew couldn't communicate properly with Russian Mission Control. Also damaged was part of the valve that equalizes pressure inside and outside the...