A Soyuz TMA-16 spaceship carrying two astronauts from the International Space Station (ISS) has successfully landed in Kazakhstan, the Russian space agency’s mission control center outside Moscow said Thursday.

After more than three hours of automatic flight, the spacecraft’s reentry vehicle landed as scheduled at around 2:25pm Moscow time (1125 GMT) near the Kazak town of Arkalyk.
The spaceship undocked from the station at 11:03 Moscow time (0803 GMT), with Russian cosmonaut Maxim Surayev and US astronaut Jeff Williams on aboard.

Surayev and Williams parachuted to the designated landing site in the reentry vehicle, said the NAST website. After preliminary medical examinations, they are to fly to Moscow to meet coworkers and families.
It was the first time in almost ten years for a landing capsule to bring back only two astronauts rather than three. The third vacancy seat has taken some additional cargoes from the ISS.
The two astronauts, who have been on a space mission for about 169 days, received two U.S. space shuttles and two Russian cargo spaceships. Surayev also performed one space walk together with his Russian colleagues.

Russian Oleg Kotov, Japanese Soichi Noguchi and American Timothy Creamer will continue to work in orbit, until a Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft delivers three more astronauts to the ISS on April 2.

WASHINGTON : The US space shuttle fleet can continue flying beyond Nasa’s September 30 deadline if the money is made available to keep it going, a US space agency official told reporters on Tuesday.

“I think the real issue that the agency and the nation has to address is the expense,” said Space Shuttle Program Manager John Shannon, noting the shuttle fleet costs the National Aeronautics and Space Administration 200 million dollars per month to maintain it in working condition.

“Where that money comes from is the big question,” he added.

Shannon’s briefing was about Nasa’s April 5 Discovery mission to the orbiting International Space Station (ISS), one of three shuttle flights remaining before the program is shut down at the end of September after 29 years of service.

Several lawmakers have recently urged the shuttle program be extended to reduce US dependency on Russia’s Soyuz spacecrafts in order to continue building the ISS until the shuttle’s successor can take off by 2015 at the earliest.

Taking up her colleagues’ concerns, Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison last week presented a bill calling for extending the shuttle program beyond its termination deadline.

On presenting his 2011 budget plan in January, US President Barack Obama confirmed the shuttle fleet’s demise this year, as well as dropping the Constellation program his predecessor George W. Bush announced in 2004 to return Americans to the moon by 2020.

Constellation included the development of the Ares 1 rocket, and its abandonment has also put into question the feasibility of the shuttle’s successor spacecraft.

Obama also asked Nasa to partner with the private sector, using funds from an economic stimulus package to develop low-cost, primary services transporting astronauts to the ISS.

Space shuttle Endeavour has returned home safely after two weeks in space, having delivered the final US module and a ‘room with a view’ to the International Space Station.
According to NASA, STS-130 Commander George Zamka guided Endeavour to a landing at the Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility at 10:20 pm EST, to wrap up a 5.7 million mile mission.
Behnken and Patrick conducted three spacewalks during the mission totaling 18 hours, 14 minutes. That brings the totals for station assembly to 140 spacewalks and more than 873 hours, as per the report by NASA. Endeavour’s 13-day flight included three spacewalks and the delivery of a connecting module that would increase the International Space Station’s interior space.

Astronauts from the US space shuttle Endeavour have said their farewells to the crew of the International Space Station, after more than a week on the orbiting outpost.
The hatches between the shuttle and the space station were closed early Friday, ahead of Endeavour’s departure. Earlier, the combined crews celebrated the latest addition to the space station with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, dedicating the Tranquility observation deck and its observation dome. The US space agency NASA says the crews left a moon rock that was carried to the summit of Mount Everest by a former astronaut. Tranquility and the dome were installed during the current shuttle mission. Endeavour is scheduled to land Sunday night at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
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Endeavour zoomed toward a midnight rendezvous with the International Space Station late Tuesday, and NASA grew ever more optimistic that the shuttle is free of any launch damage.
All the pictures and information collected during the first two days of the flight indicate Endeavour suffered no serious damage during Monday’s liftoff. But the analysis is continuing, and a few hundred photos taken from the space station during Endeavour’s final approach will yield additional data, said LeRoy Cain, chairman of the mission management team.
Endeavour and its crew of six were due to arrive at the space station a few minutes after midnight Tuesday, delivering a new room and domed lookout. They will spend more than a week there, installing the compartments and helping with space station maintenance.

Space Station Alarm Delays Atlantis Crew Spacewalk, Atlantis crew members Michael Foreman and Randy Bresnik floated outside the International Space Station for an abbreviated six-hour spacewalk after a false alarm disrupted their sleep.
The spacewalkers halted a body-conditioning sleepover in a low-pressure chamber on the station after a false depressurization alarm shut down ventilation fans. The problem, which interrupted the sleep of crews on the station and the shuttle Atlantis for a second consecutive night, appeared to stem from a new Russian docking module that arrived at the station on November 12.
Foreman and Bresnik were sleeping inside the station’s Quest airlock when alarms indicated a rapid depressurization of the station. Flight controllers quickly realized it was a false alarm but the system automatically shut down ventilation fans, which in turn allowed dust to swirl in the microgravity environment, triggering false smoke detection alarms. It took the crew about an hour to get the fans working again, prompting NASA to cancel the spacewalkers’ sleepover that was intended to purge nitrogen from their bodies to prevent a dangerous condition known as the bends. Instead, Foreman and Bresnik put on oxygen masks and exercised vigorously on stationary bicycles to rid their bodies of nitrogen before beginning the shortened spacewalk.
Atlantis arrived at the station on Wednesday to deliver spare parts for the station. NASA is stocking the outpost with equipment in hopes of keeping it operational after the US space agency’s shuttles stop flying next year. The Russian, European and Japanese cargo craft that will keep the station supplied with food, water and fuel after the shuttles are retired cannot haul the heavy pumps, tanks and gyroscopes carried aboard the shuttles. Station crewmembers will fly on Russian Soyuz capsules.
During Saturday’s spacewalk, Foreman and Bresnik worked to install communications antennas and set up a cargo attachment mechanism to the station’s truss. Bresnik, making his first spaceflight, was still awaiting word about the birth of his second child. His wife was due to deliver a baby girl on Friday.

NASA’s new Ares rocket started its slow journey to the launch pad in Florida on Tuesday. The Ares I-X rocket left the vehicle assembly building early on Tuesday morning standing on a slow-moving crawler-transporter headed for Launch Pad 39-b at the Kennedy Space Center.

Moving at a top speed of 0.8 miles per hour, the re-scheduled deployment will take approximately seven hours to cover the 4.2 miles to the pad. The rollout of Ares I-X was set originally for Monday, however during testing on October 14, engineers detected a nitrogen gas leak in an accumulator located in the aft skirt of the rocket. The accumulator, which absorbs hydraulic pressure spikes as the system operates, was replaced and successfully retested. NASA management is assessing what effect, if any, this delayed rollout will have on the targeted launch date. The 327-foot rocket is scheduled to lift off on October 27 for its first suborbital test flight.

NASA officials will use this flight to gauge flight characteristics, examine hardware and observe ground operations associated with the launch. The Ares will carry no payload during this first flight.

If the U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration gives the green light to the Ares programme, the rocket is expected to replace the Space Shuttle payload system and could begin carrying astronauts and equipment to the International Space Station within five years, with plans to act as the delivery system for any manned lunar attempts or further space exploration.

Ares I-X rocket ready to launch was first posted on October 21, 2009 at 12:00 am.

WASHINGTON: NASA was planning to launch the space shuttle Discovery early Friday after thunderstorms and a hydrogen fuel tank valve postponed two previous attempts.

The shuttle and its crew of seven astronauts were preparing for a 13-day mission to supply the orbiting International Space Station (ISS).

Ahead of the next planned launch attempt, engineers will evaluate a liquid hydrogen valve that became problematic when technicians began fueling Discovery on Tuesday, mission management team chairman Mike Moses told reporters.

It was the second scuttled launch in a 24-hour period. A first launch attempt early Tuesday was scrubbed due to stormy weather.

Moses said detailed test data about the valve would be examined before the shuttle’s fuel tank is filled with propellant ahead of the planned launch shortly after midnight.

If engineers cannot determine the exact nature of the problem or if the vlave must be replaced, he warned, “then we will probably not be in a position to launch 48 hours from now.”

Weather and hurricane risks could also prevent a Friday launch, he noted.

Discovery can blast off until about Sunday, after which any attempts would have to be postponed until mid-October due to scheduling conflicts.

US space agency officials said the problem valve cycles liquid oxygen from the external fuel tank to the shuttle’s main propulsion system, and technicians will attempt to fix it while Discovery remains at the launch pad, positioning it for a third launch attempt Friday at 12:22 am (0422 GMT).

The delays were a reminder of turbulence that surrounded the previous mission, when space shuttle Endeavour’s launch was postponed five times by weather woes and technical glitches.

The Discovery crew is scheduled to conduct three spacewalks of six and a half hours each during the mission.

A key task during the spacewalks will be to replace an old liquid ammonia coolant tank, which will be substituted with a new, 1,760-pound (800-kilogram) replacement brought aboard Discovery.

The new freezer will store samples of blood, urine and other materials that will eventually be taken back for study on the effects of zero-gravity.

The seven shuttle astronauts also will be retrieving experiment equipment from outside the ISS and returning it to Earth for processing.

A treadmill named after popular US comedy talkshow host Stephen Colbert will be the second aboard the ISS, where exercise is key for astronauts spending long periods of time in space because zero-gravity can result in muscle atrophy.

The shuttle flight is to be the first with two Hispanic astronauts: veteran mission specialist John “Danny” Olivas, 44, of El Paso, Texas, and space3 rookie Jose Hernandez, 47, of Stockton, California. Veteran European astronaut Christer Fuglesang, 52, of Sweden, is also among the crew.

Once the Discovery mission is complete, just six more shuttle flights remain before NASA’s three shuttles are retired in September 2010.

The ISS is a project jointly run by 16 countries at a cost of 100 billion dollars — largely financed by the United States.