Weather delays return from space of Russian torchbearers, U.S. astronaut

An American astronaut and two Russians who carried a Sochi Olympic torch into open space will have to stay in orbit one day longer than planned because of bad weather on the steppes of Kazakhstan, officials said on Monday. Cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazansky had been scheduled to leave the International Space Station (ISS) along with NASA's Mike Hopkins early on Tuesday and touch down in Kazakhstan at 0924 local time (2324 EDT Monday). Instead, their Soyuz TMA-10M craft is now expected to depart about a day later and land on Wednesday at about 1015 (0015 EDT), Russian news agencies cited officials at the Gagarin cosmonaut training centre outside Moscow as saying. More

(Source: Reuters - Mar 11)