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Asteroid missions on track to reach their destinations in 2018
Pioneering spacecraft from NASA and the Japanese space agency promise to reveal two unexplored asteroids later this year, officials said Wednesday, beginning surveys that will culminate in daring descents to capture samples for return to Earth, where eager scientists await a hands-on look at the specimens.
VideoLive coverage: Space station crew back on Earth
Outgoing space station commander Randy Bresnik, joined by Russian cosmonaut Sergey Ryazanskiy and European Space Agency flight engineer Paolo Nespoli, returned to Earth early Thursday after nearly five months in orbit. Their Soyuz MS-05 capsule undocked from the International Space Station at 12:14 a.m. EST (0514 GMT), and landed on the steppe of Kazakhstan at 3:37 a.m. EST (0837 GMT).

‘Hubble Hugger’ and chief of NASA science division to leave agency
Veteran astronaut John Grunsfeld, who flew five space shuttle missions before becoming the head of NASA's science mission directorate in 2012, announced Tuesday he will leave the space agency at the end of April.
VideoWatch a replay of Soyuz crew’s blastoff from Kazakhstan
Three crewmen from Russia, the United States and Great Britain blasted off toward the International Space Station on Tuesday, rocketing into space from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in pursuit of the orbiting research lab.

Live coverage: Russian-American-British crew launches toward space station
A three-man crew led by six-time space flier Yuri Malenchenko rode a Soyuz rocket into orbit Tuesday, speeding away from a Kazakh launch pad on a six-hour chase of the International Space Station. Docking occurred at 1733 GMT (12:33 p.m. EST).
VideoPhotos: Crew transport rolled out at Baikonur
Tugged along a historic route leading to the launch pad where Yuri Gagarin took off 1961 to become the first person in space, a Soyuz rocket rolled out of its assembly hangar in Kazakhstan and stood up on its launch mount Sunday.

NASA gets budget hike in spending bill passed by Congress
NASA will receive $18 billion in the federal government's 2015 budget passed by the U.S. Senate on Saturday, winning nearly all the funds the agency says it needs this year to develop commercial space capsules to fly astronauts to the International Space Station by the end of 2017.

NASA clears commercial crew contractors to resume work
Boeing Co. and SpaceX, selected by NASA last month to carry astronauts to the International Space Station, can resume development of their human-rated spacecraft after officials ordered a work stoppage prompted by a protest by Sierra Nevada Corp., the company left out of the contracts.

X-37B space planes to move into shuttle hangars
Boeing engineers are outfitting two decommissioned space shuttle hangars at the Kennedy Space Center for the U.S. Air Force's secretive X-37B space plane.

Boeing, SpaceX told to stop work under crew contracts
NASA has directed Boeing and SpaceX to halt activities under contracts awarded last month to build commercial space taxis to ferry astronauts to the Space Station while the U.S. Government Accountability Office reviews a protest of NASA's decision filed by Sierra Nevada.