CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA is paying $424 million more to Russia to get U.S. astronauts into space, and the agency's leader is blaming Congress for the extra expense. NASA announced its latest contract with the Russian Space Agency on Tuesday. The $424 million represents flights to and from the International Space Station aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft, as well as training, for six astronauts in 2016 and the first half of 2017. That's $70.6 million per seat — well above the previous price tag of about $65 million.

MOJAVE, Calif. - Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo has made its first powered flight, breaking the sound barrier in a test over the Mojave Desert that moves the company closer to its goal of flying paying passengers on brief hops into space. "It couldn't have gone more smoothly," said Sir Richard Branson, who owns the spaceline with Aabar Investments PJC of Abu Dhabi.

Beijing, Apr 26 (EFE).- Ecuador entered the space race Friday after putting into orbit its first domestically produced satellite, the Pegasus 01, which was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China. The launch, which took place with the blasting off of the Chinese unmanned LM2D satellite-carrier rocket, was right on schedule at 12:13 p.m. The Pegasus, a cube measuring 10 by 10 centimeters (4 by 4 inches) and weighing 1.2 kilos (2 2/3 pounds), will transmit direct images and videos from space for educational and scientific purposes.

An unmanned cargo vehicle on Friday successfully docked with the International Space Station, in a delicate manoeuvre after its navigation antenna failed to properly deploy following launch, Russian mission control and NASA said. Russian cosmonauts Roman Romanenko and Pavel Vinogradov first oversaw a so-called partial "soft docking" of the Progress craft at 1225 GMT, careful to make sure the unopened antenna did not cause any damage.