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BARNAUL, Russia (Reuters) - A shepherd is suing Russia's space agency for compensation after he said a 10-foot-long chunk of metal from a space rocket fell into his yard, just missing his outdoor toilet. Boris Urmatov, who is asking for 1 million roubles ($42,000) from the Roskosmos agency, lives in a small village that lies underneath the flight path of rockets taking off from the Baikonur launchpad Russia leases in nearby Kazakhstan. "Something woke him up in the night, like something exploded. Since he's visually handicapped he didn't notice the fallen rocket parts," Urmatov's sister Marina told Reuters from the...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The head of NASA said on Tuesday that the U.S. space agency has had to scale back its plans even since he took the job in April because of "daunting fiscal realities." In early 2004, U.S. President George W. Bush outlined a vision of returning humans back to the moon by 2020 and eventually to Mars. Some had hoped such a program would reignite public interest in the space program that has waned since the 1960s and early 1970s. "We must also acknowledge the plain fact that we cannot do everything that was on our plate...

DARMSTADT, Germany - A European space probe plunged into the hazy, mysterious atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan on Friday, and elated mission controllers said it had opened its parachute to slow its descent as it gathers data. The Huygens probe had successfully restarted its systems and the mission, which could provide clues to how life arose on Earth, was going well, said Roberto Lo Verda, a spokesman for the European Space Agency. "It has entered the atmosphere, and entered it correctly," Lo Verda said. "We know the batteries are switched on, the parachute has deployed and it has slowed down...

MOSCOW - An unmanned European spacecraft — poised for launch Monday on a Russian rocket — will orbit Mars for nearly two years and search for signs of life on the planet. AP Photo The Mars Express spacecraft is to be launched by the Soyuz FG booster rocket from the Russian-operated Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 9:45 p.m. Monday (1:45 p.m. EDT), according to the Russian Space Forces, which runs the launchpad. The European Space Agency vehicle, which cost $350 million, will initially be put into the Earth's orbit. About 90 minutes later, it will be given a final push...