Return to Earth of three astronauts to the international space station ISS

Written by Sandeep Nehra

The Russians Anton and Anatoly Chklaperov Ivanichine and American Dan Burbank, must return to Earth on Friday after nearly six months aboard the International Space Station (ISS), said the Russian control center of spaceflight (TSOUP).

Their Soyuz TMA-22 was separated from the station at 8:18 GMT as scheduled, according to RIA Novosti news agency.

The module must enter the atmosphere at 11:21 GMT and is intended to land in the steppes of northeastern Kazakhstan to 11:45 GMT, the center says on its website.

The three astronauts will be replaced by a new crew that will lift off May 15 from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome (Kazakhstan) to join the Russian Oleg Kononenko, American Don Pettit and Dutchman Andre Kuipers, current occupants of the ISS… Continue reading...

The Russians believe they have found the remains of Romanov princes

Written by Sandeep Nehra

Russian archaeologists believe they have found the remains of members of the imperial family by the Bolsheviks executed and buried in mass graves unearthed by chance in the Fortress of Peter and Paul in Saint Petersburg.

“According to reliable testimony, four Romanov grand dukes were executed in 1919 in the Fortress of Peter and Paul. The remains of Georgi Mikhailovich, Nikolai Mikhailovich, Dmitri Konstantinovich and Pavel Alexandrovich are probably among those that we found,” told AFP Vladimir Kildiouchevski, an archaeologist in charge of the excavations.

The remains of hundreds of people shot were found on this site in recent months.

The Grand Duke Pavel Aleksandrovich Romanov was the uncle of the last tsar Nicolas II, himself executed in the Urals by the Bolsheviks in 1918 with his… Continue reading...

Discovery of six exoplanets around the same star

Written by Sandeep Nehra

Six intermediate-sized planets have been discovered around a Sun-like star, astronomers said on Wednesday, referring to the breakthrough the most remarkable in the search for exoplanets for fifteen years.

Cover of Nature magazine showing the star Kepler-11 surrounded by six planets discovered

“This is the most important thing in the field of extrasolar planets since the discovery of 51 Pegasi b, the first exoplanet detected in 1995,” said astronomer Jack Lissauer of NASA, during a telephone press conference organized by the British scientific journal Nature.

This new planetary… Continue reading...