Russian spacecraft docks at int'l station

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft has transferred two astronauts and a space tourist into the International Space Station (ISS). 

According to the Russian centre for the control of space flights (TSOUP), the spacecraft docked on Saturday at 1305 hours GMT, with Hungarian-born US space tourist, Charles Simonyi, Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka and American astronaut Michael Barratt on board. 

This is Simonyi's second experience aboard the Russian/US jointly operated space station, for which he has paid US$35 million. His first stay cost him US$25 million in 2007. 

"The spacecraft, which took off Thursday from Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan, was forced to dock in manual mode due to an engine failure." reported a TSOUP representative. 

"One of the engines experienced a computer failure and the ship began to move away from the space station at a speed of 1 mile per second," head of the ISS Vladimir Soloviev confirmed at a press conference. 

The experienced crew managed to dock the ship successfully.

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Asteroid fragments found in Nubian Desert

Meteorite hunters have found fragments of a car-sized asteroid, known as 2008 TC3, located in the Nubian Desert in northern Sudan. 

A total of 47 meteorite fragments of the 2008 TC3 were recovered by researchers across the Nubian Desert where the asteroid created a fireball as bright as the full moon - then it exploded. 

The brilliant fireball was observed by various satellites, including a weather satellite called Meteosat-8. 

"Any number of meteorites have been observed as fireballs and smoking meteor trails as they come through the atmosphere. It's been happening for years," said Geophysicist Dr Douglas Rumble, of the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC. 

"But to actually see this object before it gets to the Earth's atmosphere and then to follow it in - that is the unique thing," Rumble added. 

When telescopes of the automated Catalina Sky Survey spotted the asteroid on October 6 last year, it was just 20 hours away from hitting Earth. 

According to orbital calculations, the object would plunge into the atmosphere above Sudan at 0246 GMT on October 7, and it arrived as anticipated. 

It was the first time scientists detected a space rock ahead of a collision with our planet. 

The compositions of asteroids can be studied through a telescope by analyzing the way sunlight reflects from their surfaces.

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