The European Space Agency unveiled 17 new members of its astronaut corps on Wednesday — including the world’s first para-astronaut — as its ministerial summit in Paris agreed to raise spending by 17 per cent to €16.9bn over the next five years. John McFall, a 41-year-old orthopaedic surgeon from the UK, lost a leg in … Read more
Four astronauts returned to Earth in a SpaceX capsule Friday, ending their nearly six-month space station mission with a splashdown in the Atlantic off Florida. Wet and windy weather across Florida delayed their homecoming. SpaceX and NASA finally gave the all-clear on Friday, and the three Americans and one Italian departed the International Space Station, … Read more
Samantha Cristoforetti, an Italian astronaut with the European Space Agency, and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev entered the vacuum of space in their puffy white spacesuits before 11 a.m. ET, and they’re expected to spend about seven hours working to install a 36-foot-long robotic arm on one of the space station’s modules. Spacewalks are a routine … Read more