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International Space Station
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Russia's Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft successfully docked to the International Space Station Monday, four days after its launch was delayed due to a technical issue, the Roscosmos space agency said.

On board is Belarus' first female cosmonaut Marina Vasilevskaya, experienced Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky and US astronaut Tracy Dyson, who blasted off on Saturday for a two-day journey.

"Soyuz MS-25 has docked to the ISS," Roscosmos said.

Novitsky and Vasilevskaya will spend 14 days in orbit, returning home aboard the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft with US astronaut Loral O'Hara, while Dyson will spend 184 days in space.

MS-25's take-off was aborted seconds before on Thursday, raising further questions about the reliability of Russia's beleaguered .

Once a space-faring pioneer, Moscow has faced multiple setbacks since the collapse of the USSR, including the loss of two Mars missions and its first lunar probe in almost 50 years last August.

Space is one of the final areas of US-Russia cooperation amid an almost complete breakdown in relations between Moscow and Washington over the last two years.

For almost a decade, Russian Soyuz launches were the only way to ferry astronauts between Earth and the ISS, after NASA halted its Space Shuttle program.

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Photo of auroral spiral Image: Photo of auroral spiral
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NRO mission launches from NASA Wallops on electron rocket  
Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket lifts off from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility March 21, 2024, at 3:25 a.m. EDT. The rocket carried small research satellites for the NROL-123 mission for National Reconnaissance Office. Credit: NASA/Jamie Adkins

NASA's Wallops Flight Facility supported the successful launch of a Rocket Lab Electron rocket at 3:25 a.m. EDT, Thursday, March 21, from Virginia's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island, Virginia.

The carried three collaborative research missions for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). The , dubbed NROL-123, was the first NRO mission to fly on a Rocket Lab rocket launched from the United States.

"We are proud to support our commercial and government launch partners with world-class launch range, safety and ," said David L.

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Why scientists are making space data into sounds
Histogram showing the relative amount of BLV and sighted participants. Red (blue) bars represent sighted (BLV) participants. The x-axis shows the participant counts and the y-axis shows the self-reported level of astronomy knowledge from novice to expert. Note the significant difference between BLV and sighted participants. Thirteen participants omitted astronomical knowledge or BLV status and were omitted from this figure.
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international space station
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Denver-based companies Voyager Space and Palantir Technologies have signed an agreement to work together on enhancing national security capabilities in the commercial space realm.

A memorandum of understanding approved in February seeks to combine Voyager Space's more than three decades of space exploration and missions with Palantir's software and data analysis. The company's customers include the military, and health care organizations.

"We are thrilled to collaborate with Palantir, exploring a diverse range of technologies and applications as we operate in a commercial space ecosystem," Marshall Smith, Voyager's chief technology officer, said in a statement.

Shyam Sankar, CTO of Palantir, said in a statement that the partnership represents a commitment to "advancing the frontiers of global commerce, civil, and national security capabilities" while reaffirming industry's role in bringing leading-edge technology to space exploration and security.

Voyager has a history of working on the International Space Station and is one of a handful of companies selected by NASA to design and develop commercial space stations. The ISS is expected to be retired in 2030. China's Tiangong space station is the only other one currently in operation.

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Artist's impression of a new mission to an ocean moon

A fresh, icy crust hides a deep, enigmatic ocean. Plumes of water burst through cracks in the ice, shooting into space. An intrepid lander collects samples and analyses them for hints of life.

ESA has started to turn this scene into a reality, devising a mission to investigate an ocean world around either Jupiter or Saturn. But which moon should we choose? What should the mission do exactly? A team of expert scientists has delivered their findings.

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International Space Station
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Two astronauts from Belarus and the U.S. have set off for the International Space Station together with a Russian cosmonaut, marking the first time that a woman from Belarus is traveling to space.

The Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft lifted off from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in the steppes of Kazakhstan at 12:36 GMT.

A first launch attempt had been aborted 20 seconds before takeoff on Thursday due to .

Saturday's launch saw Belorussian astronaut Marina Vasilevskaya, who is being accompanied by NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky, becoming the first woman from her country to make it into space.

Space cooperation between the U.S. and Russia, including Moscow's ally Belarus, continues despite the U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia over the war in Ukraine.

The launch also saw two women aboard a Soyuz capsule flying to the ISS for the first time.

This is Dyson's third flight into space and Novitsky's fourth.

Vasilevskaya works as a flight attendant for the Belorussian company Belavia. During her two-week stay on the ISS, she will carry out and take spectral images of the Earth's surface.

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Orbital megastructure

More than two hundred years into the future, our descendants contemplate creating the largest single structure in human history for the next evolutionary leap: a multi-generational starship capable of bringing people to the first truly Earth-like exoplanet. Yet this interstellar ark – to be self-assembled out of builder units in Earth orbit – will be sufficiently complex as well as vast that even designing it involves formidable mathematical challenges. And this odyssey needs to be preceded by a mammoth astronomy effort to prospect the way ahead, involving a formation of orbital telescopes able to operate together as one, yielding

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