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In this Sept. 16, 2014 photo provided by NASA, astronaut Jeanette Epps participates in a spacewalk training session at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. In June 2018, Epps was supposed to be the first African-American to live on the International Space Station, but on Thursday, Jan. 18, 2018, NASA announced it was pulling her off the mission for undisclosed reasons. (Robert Markowitz/NASA via AP) __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ NASA has bumped an astronaut off an upcoming spaceflight, a rare move for the space agency so close to launch. Astronaut Jeanette Epps was supposed to rocket away in early June, and would have...

A Japanese astronaut who is living on the International Space Station says he has grown 9cm (3.5in) since arriving there just over three weeks ago. Norishige Kanai wrote on social media he was worried he would not fit into the seat of the Russian Soyuz vehicle that is due to bring him home in June. Astronauts grow an average of between two and five centimetres in space. This is because of the absence of gravity which allows the vertebrae in their spines to spread apart. Mr Kanai tweeted: "Good morning, everybody. I have a major announcement today. We had our...

Today, operations in space are more routine and the competition between states is more diffuse. While generally still important in international politics, prestige plays only a small role in the current international dynamic. To be clear: There is still competition between the U.S. and rising powers. However, unlike the Cold War, which was a battle of opposing political philosophies, here we see competition primarily over economic and strategic opportunity. Another significant difference between the Cold War space race and the current one is that the playing field isn’t level as it was during the Cold War. The U.S. today has...

NASA astronauts successfully sequenced the DNA of microbes found aboard the International Space Station, marking the first time unknown organisms were sequenced and identified entirely in space. Previously, microbes had to be sent to Earth for analysis, and this new sequencing marks an important step in diagnosing astronaut illnesses and, someday, identifying any DNA-based life found on other planets... ... As a part of the Genes in Space-3 mission, astronauts on the space station last year touched a petri plate to surfaces on the space station and grew the bacteria found there into colonies, which NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson used...

President Donald Trump signed his administration's first space policy directive today (Dec. 11), which formally directs NASA to focus on returning humans to the moon.

Living bacteria were found on the surface of the International Space Station (ISS), and they might have extraterrestrial origins, Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov said. The microorganisms will be studied further on Earth. Shkaplerov, an ISS expedition flight engineer who will take his third trip to the ISS in December as part of the Expedition 54 crew, said that scientists found living bacteria while they were taking samples from the surface of the station. Speaking to TASS, he said that the microorganisms might have come from outer space. ... However, traces of bacteria originating on Earth – from Madagascar – and...

"The reason we want our own airlock is this airlock is going to be five times bigger than the current airlock, and it's going to be far more commercial," Manber said in a Sept. 27 presentation at the International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia. In addition to satellite deployments and experiments, he said the module will be commercial "real estate" on the station, with the ability to mount payloads on its exterior. "It's getting us more into the real estate business and space station operations," he said. ... NanoRacks has long-term ambitions to develop its own commercial station, and is...

Look closely at this photo of the great North American solar eclipse. You'll notice the sun and the moon's rounded bite taken out of the side. Most of the dark specks are sunspots. But there's something else notable. A larger speck near the curve of the moon's shadow is the International Space Station. The International Space Station Twitter account shared the photo on Monday with the message "It's the moon, sunspots AND the station in front of the sun. @NASA photographer captures station transiting sun during #Eclipse2017." The ISS looks different from the sunspots. You can even make out the...

Dream Chaser will launch atop the commercial Atlas V in its most powerful configuration, dubbed Atlas V 552, with five strap on solid rocket motors and a dual engine Centaur upper stage while protectively tucked inside a five meter diameter payload fairing – with wings folded. Blast off of Dream Chaser loaded with over 5500 kilograms of cargo mass for the space station crews will take place from ULA’s seaside Space Launch Complex-41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The unique lifting body design enables runway landings for Dream Chaser, similar to the NASA’s Space Shuttle at the...

While the concept is not new — the space shuttles, for instance, flew multiple times in orbit — it’s important for saving money as well as technical reasons, he noted. SpaceX refurbished the Dragon for Thursday’s planned launch with a new heat shield and fresh parachutes for re-entry at mission’s end. There were so many X-rays and inspections that savings, if any, were minimal this time, said Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of flight reliability for SpaceX. The vast majority of this Dragon has already been to space, including the hull, thrusters and tanks. It’s packed with 6,000 pounds of station...

NASA managers ordered the spacewalk over the weekend when a computer unit known as multiplexer-demultiplexer-1 (MDM-1) unexpectedly failed Saturday morning, May 20 at 1:13 p.m. Central time. The cause of the MDM failure is not known, says NASA. Multiple attempts by NASA flight controllers to restore power to the MDM-1 relay box were not successful. The US dynamic duo successfully changed out the MDM computer relay box with a spare unit on board the station. They also installed a pair of antennas on the station on the U.S. Destiny Laboratory module to enhance wireless communication for future spacewalks. The MDM...

NASA is set to use a radical new 'tricorder' DNA sequencer to work out what a mysterious fungus found growing on the International Space Station is. Astronauts have reported funding the strange microbial growths on walls and surfaces, and it has even clogged waterlines. Now, two instruments onboard will be used to analyse it in orbit, allowing mission controllers to work out how to deal with it

The bizarre footage shows part of the space station looking out onto a black nothingness. For no apparent reason, the dark outlook begins to get lighter as some sort of circular object floats past. It continues to get lighter and lighter as the shadow is lifted. In his caption to the video, he pointed out he wasn’t for certain saying it was a “huge mothership or any sort of alien spacecraft” but that it “certainly looks unusual”. Alien enthusiast Streetcap1 posted the footage to his YouTube channel on Saturday (March 19). As he watched the mysterious shape move past, he...

The International Space Station (ISS) is set to gain another addition in 2019, with the announcement of a milestone being achieved with the goal of launching a commercial airlock for installation on the Tranquility module. The airlock – in association with NanoRacks and Boeing – will be used for deploying external payloads and cubesats. The goal of fostering commercial use of the orbital outpost is a major goal for NASA, now the Station is in the utilization phase after years of assembly. Some signs of that aim being achieved are being seen, such as the recent addition of the Bigelow...

An internet security specialist says that Stuxnet, the computer malware that targeted Iran's nuclear facilities in 2010 and widely attributed to Israel and the US, has spiraled out of control and attacked a Russian nuclear plant and the International Space Station.

Japan launching 'space junk' collector 09 December 2016 - 12H05 TOKYO (AFP) - Japan will launch a cargo ship Friday bound for the International Space Station, carrying a 'space junk' collector that was made with the help of a fishnet company. The vessel, dubbed "Kounotori" (stork in Japanese), is to blast off from the southern island of Tanegashima around 10:30 pm local time (0130 GMT) attached to an H-IIB rocket. Scientists at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) are experimenting with a tether to pull junk out of orbit around Earth, clearing up tonnes of space clutter including cast-off equipment...

Russia's Roscosmos space corporation reported earlier on Thursday it had lost telemetry exchange with the Progress MS-04 space freighter some six minutes after the launch on board a Soyuz carrier rocket. The Roscosmos press service stressed that the loss of the cargo ship will not affect the routine operations of the ISS and the crew. A state commission currently analyzes the incident.

Russia's space agency says an unmanned cargo space ship that blasted off to the International Space Station has crashed due to an unspecified malfunction. Roscosmos says in a statement Thursday that the Progress MS-04 cargo craft crashed at the altitude of 190 kilometers (118 miles) over the remote Russian Tyva region that borders Mongolia. It says most of the space ship's debris burnt as it entered the atmosphere.

Like many Atlantans, astronaut Shane Kimbrough plans to gather around the table and eat a traditional Thanksgiving meal. But this traditional meal certainly isn't typical. Kimbrough—along with five other space crew members—are aboard the International Space Station (ISS), orbiting many miles away in space on Thanksgiving Day. Kimbrough is one of two Americans on board, but all of the astronauts—who are from the U.S., France and Russia—will dig into a space-friendly version of a quintessential, American Thanksgiving meal: packets of turkey, green beans, candied yams and mashed potatoes. In order to eat dinner, the orbiting men and women just add...

Whitson will be celebrating her 57th birthday aboard the ISS in February 2017. On completion of her 179-day stint aboard the ISS, she will rewrite several space record books. She is already the oldest woman to orbit the earth. She will hold the record as the woman with the most time in space. She will also become the American astronaut with the most time in space, 556 days, beating the existing record, 534 days, of astronaut Jeff Williams. Among the other crew members, the 45-year-old Novitskiy is on his second flight into space, having already spent 144 days on an...