
Anne McClain


SpaceX crew ship set for Friday re-entry, splashdown
Space station astronauts closed hatches to the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft Thursday, setting the stage for undocking early Friday and a fiery unpiloted plunge to splashdown off the coast of Florida. A successful return to Earth will help clear the way for launch of the first piloted test flight of the new ferry ship in the mid-summer timeframe.




Soyuz crew enjoys problem-free launch, docks with space station
A Soyuz FG rocket thundered to life and shot into orbit smoothly Monday carrying three crew members on a six-hour flight to the International Space Station. The problem-free ascent came less than two months after an Oct. 11 launch abort that forced a different crew to carry out safe-but-scary emergency landing.



Live coverage: Russia launches first crewed mission since Soyuz failure
Veteran Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, flanked by Canadian flight engineer David Saint-Jacques and NASA astronaut Anne McClain, launched toward the International Space Station at 6:31 a.m. EST (1131 GMT) Monday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the first crew launch for Russia’s space program since a Soyuz booster failure led to the emergency landing of a two-man crew in October. The Soyuz MS-11 spacecraft docked with the station at 12:33 p.m. EST (1733 GMT).

Soyuz crew rocket arrives on the pad for first time since dramatic launch abort
Keeping up a tradition dating back to the dawn of the Space Age, a Russian Soyuz rocket emerged from a hangar at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan before sunrise Saturday for rollout to Launch Pad No. 1 at the Central Asia space base, moving into position for liftoff Monday with a U.S.-Russian-Canadian crew heading for the International Space Station.