Year on ISS planned ahead of manned Mars mission

NASA and the Russian space agency plan to send an international crew to the ISS for a year. The extended mission, if it succeeds, may bring scientists a step closer to manned flights to Mars and beyond.

­The plan envisages an international crew, made up of an American astronaut and Russian cosmonaut, blasting off on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in March 2015.

"A one-year increment on the ISS would be a natural progression as part of preparations for missions beyond low-Earth orbit," NASA spokesman Rob Navias said on Friday.

The extended expedition aims to gather the scientific data needed to send humans to destinations much farther away from Earth. The mission hopes to prove whether or not missions lasting longer than six months are possible.

NASA says the results will add more understanding to existing assumptions about crew performance and health and will be will helpful in reducing the risks associated with future exploration.  Manned missions to an asteroid or Mars are already in the pipeline, being penned for 2025 and 2035 respectively.

Medical and biological studies provide the basis of research aboard the station, which also serves as a $100 billion “laboratory” for technological demonstartions and scientific examinations.

The mission may improve the understanding of how human beings can tolerate the weightless environment of space for that long.

Doctors are particularly concerned about the affect it will have on bone density, muscle mass, strength, vision and other aspects of human physiology.

The yearlong stay will span the space station's 43rd through to 46th expeditions and will become the first time the ISS will host a mission of that duration.

However, the two will not be the only ones to have left Earth for so long.

So far, only four people have spent a year or longer in orbit during a single mission. All four are Russian cosmonauts who served aboard the Mir space station that operated in low Earth orbit for 15 years, before it was scrapped in 2001.

Back then, in 1988, Soviet cosmonauts Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov spent 365 days in space.

The record set in 1988 was then broken between 1994 and 1995, when Russian, Valery Polyakov stayed on board for 438 days.

It is still to be announced who will take part in the record-breaking 365 day mission on the ISS. There's speculation that Peggy Whitson, NASA's former chief astronaut, might be a potential candidate.

It is expected as many as two additional seats to fly to ISS may be available. Rumors suggest Russia may them to  so-called 'space tourists.'

Rocket launches new crew to space

A Soyuz rocket blasted off with an international crew of three toward the International Space Station on Sunday in a mission testing the reliability of Russia’s crisis-prone space program.

NASA’s Sunita Williams and Japan’s Akihiko Hoshide and Yury Malenchenko of Russia started their journey on top of the Soyuz-FG under the open skies of the Kazakh steppe on schedule and without a hitch.

The trio gave big thumbs up after the needle-shaped craft pierced a thin layering of white clouds and safely reached orbit about nine minutes later.

“Goodbye Planet Earth for now! Woo Hoo!” Williams tweeted a few hours before the 305-tonne craft shook the ground with a violent orange explosion of booster rocket flames.

Russia’s Roscosmos space program chief Vladimir Popovkin told reporters that he spoke briefly to the crew members a few minutes into their journey and “They feel fine. I have no doubts that everything will go well.”

Live footage from inside the Soyuz TMA-05M capsule that will dock to the ISS after a two-day journey showed a small doll in a red dress hanging before the three space travelers as a good luck charm as the rocket gathered pace.

Three astronauts land on Earth from ISS in Russian capsule

This image provided by NASA shows Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko (center), Expedition 31 commander; along with NASA astronaut Don Pettit (left) and European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers, both flight engineers, attired in Russian Sokol launch and entry suits, pose for a photo in the Destiny laboratory of the International Space Station Wednesday June 20, 2012. 

A Russian Soyuz capsule carrying three astronauts on Sunday landed on schedule in the Kazakh steppe, the Russian mission control said.

"At 12:14 Moscow time (0814 GMT) the Soyuz TMA-03M capsule landed with an international crew," Russian flight control centre said after Russian Oleg Kononenko, NASA astronaut Don Pettit and Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers were parachuted to Earth.

"All the operations on descending from orbit and landing went by without any concerns," Russian flight control said in a statement posted on its website.

 "The crew members who have returned to Earth are feeling well," it added. The capsule descended through an overcast sky to land in a grassy field with the three men who had spent more than six months on the International Space Station. The astronauts, weakened by their landing, were extracted from the capsule and lowered into armchairs in the steppe, chatting to rescue workers and speaking on a telephone to family members, in footage shown live on NASA TV.

The expedition commander Oleg Kononenko, who was first to be pulled from the descent module, looked pale and blinked in the daylight as the men adjusted to gravity after spending a total of 192 days in space.

The men blasted off on December 21 from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, docking with the ISS two days later. While on the ISS, Kononenko took part in a two-man spacewalk lasting more than six hours.

The men leave three astronauts on the ISS: Joe Acaba, Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin, who will be reinforced later this month with three more crew members expected to blast off from Kazakhstan on July 14.

The next Soyuz flight will take up NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, Russian Yuri Malenchenko and Akihiko Hoshide of Japan, who are due to stay on the ISS until November.