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Added on the 15/09/2023 13:38:01 - Copyright : France 24 EN
Boeing's beleaguered Starliner returns to Earth on without the astronauts who traveled in it to the International Space Station, after NASA deemed the risk too great. The gumdrop-shaped capsule landed gently at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico at approximately 0401 GMT Saturday, its descent slowed by parachutes and cushioned by airbags, having departed the ISS around six hours earlier. IMAGES
Two US astronauts who arrived at the International Space Station aboard Boeing's Starliner will have to return home with rival SpaceX, NASA says. "NASA has decided that Butch and Sunny will return with Crew 9 next February, and that Starliner will return uncrewed," NASA administrator Bill Nelson tells reporters. The return of Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita "Suni" Williams has been delayed by thruster malfunctions of the Boeing spacecraft. SOUNDBITE
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hails the United States' decision to allow Kyiv to use American-supplied weapons to strike in Russia, with some restrictions. The move is "some step forward" toward the defence of people in border villages, Zelensky tells reporters at a Ukrainian-Northern Europe security summit in Stockholm. SOUNDBITE
A space capsule carrying the International Space Station (ISS) crew of Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitri Petelin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, lands on the Earth's surface in Kazakhstan. IMAGES
NASA says it has succeeded in deflecting an asteroid in a historic test of humanity's ability to stop an incoming cosmic object from devastating life on Earth. The fridge-sized Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impactor deliberately smashed into the moonlet asteroid Dimorphos on September 26, pushing it into a smaller, faster orbit around its big brother Didymos, says NASA chief Bill Nelson in a press conference from Washington. SOUNDBITE
NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov hug their International Space Station crewmates before boarding a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to Earth. Cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev closes the hatch of the capsule. NASA, earlier in March, said tensions linked to the war in Ukraine had no impact on ISS operations or the planned return of an American astronaut aboard a Russian capsule later this month. There have been fears that soaring tensions between the United States and Russia over Ukraine could leave the 55-year-old stranded on the outpost. There had been fears that soaring tensions between the United States and Russia over Ukraine could leave the 55-year-old Vande Hei stranded on the outpost. IMAGES