Space Programs Russia

The troublesome motion-control system aboard the Russian space station Mir was working again Monday, one day before the planned launch of the U.S. shuttle Discovery on NASA's last mission to the space outpost, officials said. The Russian space outpost had been adrift in orbit since its motion-control system shut down Saturday, threatening to delay the launch of Discovery. NASA's strict flight rules forbid a shuttle to dock if Mir is not under full control.

An American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts moved into the international space station on Monday for a four-month stay. For the first time in five months, an American was in charge again at space station Alpha. NASA and the Russian space agency are taking turns providing the commander. Mission Control extended a warm welcome to astronaut Frank Culbertson, replacing cosmonaut Yuri Usachev as skipper. "We're thrilled to be here," Culbertson said. "We will take very good care of it."

Astronauts and cosmonauts conducted a final round of medical experiments Thursday while crew mates prepared the space shuttle Atlantis for its return from a historic U.S.-Russian docking mission. Atlantis, launched June 27 with five astronauts and a new two-cosmonaut crew for the Russian space station Mir, was scheduled to land at 7:55 a.m. PDT today at Florida's Kennedy Space Center with eight aboard, including astronaut Norman E.

Pizza Hut now delivers to outer space. Boldly going where no restaurant chain has gone before, the company recently sent a small, vacuum-packed salami pizza into orbit aboard a Russian rocket. No, the rocket didn't have one of those lighted Pizza Hut signs on the roof. It was a cargo ship ferrying supplies to the International Space Station. Once the craft docked, cosmonaut Yuri Usachov unpacked the 6-inch disc, heated it in a tiny silver oven and took a bite.

Ground controllers and the Mir space station's former crew share responsibility for a June space collision, space officials said Thursday, contradicting an earlier verdict that blamed only the cosmonauts. Several space agencies were on the latest commission, and they spread the blame more widely than a panel that reported its conclusions Tuesday.

Gazing out on the grounds of his palatial hilltop estate, it doesn't take long for the gentleman in the gray silk suit to reveal his passion: "This is my own spaceship on Earth," he says. Here, in the rarefied atmosphere high above the Getty Museum in Pacific Palisades, Dennis Tito lives alone in one of L.A.'s poshest pads. He surrounds himself with the good things in life--a tennis court and pool, European antiques, tapestries and chandeliers. He parks his Ferrari in an eight-car garage.

As an unmanned cargo capsule hurtled toward the crippled Mir space station with repair tools Saturday, U.S. astronaut Michael Foale and his two Russian colleagues readied for a perilous mission that could make or break Russia's manned space program. The Progress craft ferrying vital supplies and life-support equipment is expected to dock with Mir early Monday.

A Russian "friendship rocket" carrying religious icons and a toy stuffed dog splashed down off Washington state's coast. Space Flight Europe-America 500 commemorated the International Year of Space and the 500th anniversary of Columbus' arrival in the Western Hemisphere. A Soyuz rocket carrying the capsule was launched a week ago from the once-secret Plesetsk space center near the northern Russian port of Archangel.

After a flawless docking, astronaut Norman E. Thagard floated aboard the space station Mir on Thursday, becoming the first American to visit the 9-year-old Russian facility. As Thagard steered his weightless body through the hatch into the Mir, cosmonaut Yelena V. Kondakova wrapped her arms around him in a big Russian bear hug and kissed him on the cheek.

NASA astronaut Shannon Lucid floated into Russia's space station for a five-month "great adventure" after the shuttle Atlantis docked there Saturday night. Atlantis slowly and gracefully moved in and linked with the Mir station as the spacecraft soared 245 miles above Russia. Two hours later, the hatches were opened and the six shuttle astronauts and two station cosmonauts embraced and shook hands, laughing. "Everybody's real excited to be together here," said Atlantis' commander, Kevin Chilton.

Do-it-yourself astronaut Dennis Tito returned home to Los Angeles on Wednesday, pledging to spend the rest of his life trying to open space travel to ordinary people. The Pacific Palisades financier, who reportedly paid Russia $20 million for a ride to and from the International Space Station, said he wants to help create a commercial venture that would shuttle tourists into space at a much lower cost.

Dennis Tito was as true to form Tuesday on Earth as in the heavens: enthusiastic, philosophical and unapologetic about having ruffled some NASA feathers by going into space on a Russian rocket. Facing reporters at his first full news conference since Sunday's Soyuz capsule landing in Kazakhstan, the pioneer of space tourism said his eight-day voyage, including six aboard the International Space Station, would prove to be beneficial in the long run for NASA, for U.S.

Dennis Tito returned to a hero's welcome--just not from his own country. A lone American flag hastily put up at Chkalovsky military airport represented the United States on Sunday at the welcoming ceremony for the world's first "space tourist." No representative of NASA or the U.S. government was on hand for the brief formal procedure near here that officially concluded the first individually paid sightseeing trip to outer space.

History's first paid space tourist got his trip to orbit in the "wrong way," and his Russian hosts may end up having to pay for it, the chief of NASA said Wednesday. NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin told a House subcommittee that Dennis Tito, 60, a Los Angeles multimillionaire who ignored the objections of NASA and paid Russia $20 million to fly him to the space station, has caused anxiety among space workers who oversee the mission's safety.

With a smile and a wave, Los Angeles multimillionaire Dennis Tito rocketed into the heavens Saturday in a flawless launch from the Baikonur cosmodrome that officially made him the world's first "space tourist." As the Soyuz rocket in which he was strapped spewed fire and began to climb slowly skyward, Tito calmly checked his watch and a sheet of launch instructions and occasionally waved again at the cockpit camera.

When Dennis Tito's sons were young, he told the boys that they could do anything if they set their minds to it. "So I tried to imagine the most impossible thing I could, and that was jumping to the moon," recalls Brad Tito, now 23. "Well, guess what? Dad's jumping to the moon." Not quite all the way to the moon. But if all goes as planned, Tito today will become the world's first "space tourist"--not the first civilian to venture into the heavens but the first to pay his own passage.

Space shuttle Discovery returned to Earth on Friday, bringing home the last American to live aboard Mir and closing out three years of U.S.-Russian cooperation aboard the aging space station. His body weakened by 4 1/2 months in zero gravity, Andrew Thomas was carried from Discovery on a reclining seat and taken to Kennedy Space Center's crew quarters, where dinner and a slew of medical tests awaited him.

In the strongest sign yet that Russia's era of space glory may be ending, the Russian Space Agency plans to have cosmonauts abandon the Mir space station in August and then to let it eventually burn up in the atmosphere unless new funding is found, officials said Tuesday. The decision must still be approved by President Boris N. Yeltsin. The 13-year-old Mir saw a series of accidents in 1997, including a fire and a near-fatal space collision.

European and Canadian space officials joined NASA in objecting to Russia's plan to put a U.S. millionaire tourist aboard the international space station this month. The Russians plan to launch California tycoon Dennis Tito and two cosmonauts aboard a Soyuz rocket April 28. The Soyuz will arrive at the space station two days later, and Tito will spend a week aboard.

Dennis Tito's countdown has begun. Russian space officials, defying complaints from NASA, on Wednesday formally approved the 60-year-old Los Angeles millionaire to serve as the third member of Moscow's next mission to the International Space Station. They set the launch date for April 28. Tito will fork over about $20 million for the flight, making him the world's first American "space tourist." But he considers himself a space pioneer in his own right.