2015

Cosmonauts Elena Serova and Alexander Samokutyaev and astronaut Barry Wilmore assisted after their landing (Image NASA TV)

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A few hours ago, NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova returned to Earth on the Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft, which landed without problems in Kazakhstan. The three of them spent almost six months on the International Space Station, where they arrived on September 25, 2014. Initially, they were part of Expedition 41, in the second half of their stay they were part of Expedition 42 with Barry Wilmore as Station commander.

Splash events recorded by the LHCb and ALICE experiments testing the Large Hadron Collider (Image courtesy CERN. All rights reserved)

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CERN has confirmed that during the last weekends two of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments have successfully sent proton beams through the particle accelerator. This is the first full test of operation that marks the beginning of the last phase of restart after the equipment upgrade made during the last two years. The test, conducted by the LHCb (Large Hadron Collider beauty) and ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) experiment was a success.

The Orbital ATK spacecraft Cygnus during its Orb-1 mission and the SpaceX spacecraft Dragon during its CRS-5 mission (Photo NASA)

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A NASA spokesman announced that the agency decided to extend the CRS (Commercial Resupply Services) contract with SpaceX and Orbital ATK for transporting cargo to the International Space Station. The additional missions are planned for 2017 and are intended to cover NASA’s needs until the new contract, called CRS 2, will be awarded. This extension provides three more missions for SpaceX spacecraft Dragon and another mission for the Orbital ATK spacecraft Cygnus.

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NASA confirmed that its space probe Dawn regularly entered the dwarf planet Ceres’ orbit. It was at an altitude of about 61,000 kilometers (about 38,000 miles) when it was captured by the Ceres’ gravity. This happened yesterday but Dawn was on the hidden side of the dwarf planet when it entered its orbit. The consequence is that it took a bit before the probe reached a position where it could transmit data to Earth.

Montage of four pictures of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko taken by the Rosetta space probe's NAVCAM (Image ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM)

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After the flyby performed a few weeks ago, the Rosetta space probe moved away from the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and was able to observe its increasing activity. In late February, from a distance between 80 and 100 km (from 50 to 52 miles) its Navigation Camera (NAVCAM) instrument took several photographs that ESA processed to make the best observations of the jets of steam and dust emitted by the comet.