Hail of Debris Forces Space Station Evacuation

(NEWSER) - A Russian spacecraft carrying a cosmonaut, an astronaut, and the first two-time space tourist has docked with the International Space Station, the CBC reports. The Soyuz capsule will soon offload the two crew members and US billionaire Charles Simonyi. Simonyi will return to Earth in the same capsule on April 7 with two crew members leaving the station. The visit will cost the software executive $35 million. More»

Ammonia tank chucked from ISS expected to break up in atmosphere

(NEWSER) - NASA is tracking a fridge-sized chunk of space trash expected to plunge to Earth tomorrow night, Space.com reports. The ammonia tank was thrown overboard from the International Space Station over a year ago and has been slowly descending since. NASA says it's highly unlikely that anybody will impacted by the debris but people should be wary of any strange objects they find. More»

600 International Space Station shots take you from soup to nuts

(NEWSER) - What a world, what a world. Now anyone can (virtually) fly over the earth, thanks to an ingenious US science educator who has spliced together 600 publicly accessible photos snapped from the International Space Station. James Drake merged them in a minute-long video that leads the viewer over the world. The super popular video, posted on YouTube, starts over the Pacific, travels across North and South America, and enters daylight near Antarctica. Cities from San Francisco to Mexico City can be spotted. The photos were downloaded from the NASA website The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth , which has been storing outer space shots since the Mercury missions, notes the Daily Mail . More»

Bottle will remain sealed, hit museums

(NEWSER) - The Discovery crew will leave the International Space Station today for the first of two spacewalks—and one of their missions is to capture a sample of space in a metal bottle. The bottle will be given to Japan's space agency, which says it will remain sealed and make the museum rounds to provide "a conduit between humans and space." The astronauts will also put some finishing touches on the space station, the Christian Science Monitor reports. More»

Despite earlier glitch, landing goes flawlessly

(NEWSER) - Russia's Soyuz space capsule safely touched down in a Kazakhstan steppe this morning, reports the AP, landing flawlessly a day after being delayed by an undocking glitch with the International Space Station. "That was almost a bull's-eye landing," said a NASA spokesman as Russian officials swarmed the landing site to pull astronaut Tracy Caldwell-Dyson and cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko from the Soyuz. More»