Space Station Crew Returning to Earth After Delay

Three crewmembers who have been aboard the International Space Station for an extended, 6.5-month mission will be heading home on Thursday, with no launch date set for their replacements. Station commander Terry Virts with NASA, Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov and the Italian Space Agency’s Samantha Cristoforetti had been slated to fly back to Earth on May 13. The trio launched aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule on Nov. 24, 2014. The Russian Space Agency, Roscosmos, and its partners in the station program delayed the crew’s homecoming and the launch of their replacements while engineers investigated why a Russian Progress cargo ship, flying on a different version of the Soyuz rocket used to launch crew, failed shortly after reaching orbit on April 28. More

(Source: Discovery News - Jun 10)