U.S. space tourist Charles Simonyi enjoyed an extra day in space on Tuesday when boggy ground meant the date and location of his return to Earth in a capsule with two others had to be changed, the Reuters news agency reported Monday.
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April 18, 2007The crew of the Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft have met with the colleagues aboard the International Space Station, the Interfax news agency reported quoting Russian mission control.
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April 10, 2007Russia intends to launch its first research micro-satellites in 2008, the Federal Space Agency said Monday.
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March 5, 2007A Russian Soyuz-U rocket with a Progress M-59 space cargo ship has been launched from the Baikonur space center to the ISS.
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January 19, 2007Five volunteers have been selected for a simulated Mars mission, expected to be launched in Russia late next year, the Russian news agency RIA-Novosti quoted a spokesman for the Russian Space Agency as saying Friday.
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December 29, 2006According to the Russian Federal Space Agency, a Russian Proton-M rocket that blasted off at 2328 GMT, orbited the Malaysian telecommunications satellite Measat 3 Monday, Interfax news agency reports.
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December 12, 2006The price of a commercial flight to the International Space Station has risen from $20 million to $21 million, a Russian space official is quoted by RIA Novosti news agency as saying.
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November 10, 2006A Soyuz-Fregat rocket has lifted off from the Russian space base at Baikonur, Kazakhstan, bearing a large European weather satellite.
The rocket carrying the 4.1-tonne satellite MetOp-A lifted off Thursday at 1628 GMT to be placed in an 850-kilometer (531-mile) orbit around the poles.
Five previous attempts to launch the new-generation satellite since July had been thwarted by technical hitches and poor weather.
MetOp-A is billed as the most sophisticated Earth-observation satellite ever built, with 13 instruments to record temperature, humidity, wind speed and ozone cover across the globe, monitor the environment in space and listen out for signals from ships and aircraft in distress.
Europe’s current generation of weather satellites operates at geostationary orbit, providing snapshots of half of the Earth from a distance of 36,000 kilometers (22,500 miles).
MetOp will provide pictures of the entire globe, swinging around the poles in 101-minute orbits while the planet turns.
These images will be in much finer detail than those provided by geostationary satellites and should enable forecasters to speed up accurate medium-range forecasts by half a day, according to MetOp’s operator, the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT).
MetOp will operate in conjunction with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), whose satellite will fly in a complementary orbit in order to maximize coverage.
Two other MetOp (Meteorological Operational) satellites will follow MetOp-A under a 2.4-billion-euro (three-billion-dollar plan) over the next 10 years. Together, they will provide EUMETSAT with data until 2020.
EUMETSAT has pledged three quarters of the cost, with the rest coming from the ESA.
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October 20, 2006
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