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.

Moscow, Apr 24 (EFE).- The Russian Progress M-19M cargo ship launched Wednesday from the Baikonur space complex in Kazakhstan was unable to fully deploy one of its proximity antennas, the Space Flight Control Center said. "That's right, one of the antennas that guarantee the approach to the International Space Station (ISS) did not deploy," a spokesman for the center told the Interfax news agency. Russian specialists will examine the position of the apparatus when the space ship enters the area monitored by the Space Flight Control Center, the spokesman said.

A unmanned Progress spaceship racing to the ISS with 2.5 tonnes of cargo on board failed Wednesday to deploy a key antenna that helps it dock with the orbiting lab in the latest hitch in Russia's space programme. "There was a problem with one of the antennae in the Kurs (Navigation) system," Vitaly Lopota of the Energia space corporation the designs Russian spacecraft told the Interfax news agency. The US space agency NASA said in a tweet: "Once in orbit, an antenna used as a navigational aid on the Progress did not deploy. Russian ground controllers are assessing a fix."