On October 4, 2018 at 14:45 UTC the Russian “Soyuz MS-08” landing capsule landed safely in Kazakhstan.

The spacecraft delivered to Earth the 3 members of ISS’s Expedition 56 – Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev; American astronauts Andrew Feustel and Richard Arnold. They spent in space 197 days. Three other ISS crew members – Russian cosmonaut Sergey Prokopiev, German astronaut Alexander Gerst and American astronaut Serena Maria Auñón-Chancellor remained in orbit aboard the International Space Station as the Expedition 57 crew. The undocking of Soyuz MS-08 marked the end of Expedition ... Read more »

On October 4, 2018 at 07:57 UTC the Russian “Soyuz MS-08” spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station to deliver to Earth the 3 members of Expedition 56 – Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev; American astronauts Andrew Feustel and Richard Arnold.

The MASCOT (Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout) lander released from Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft made three hops to different locations on asteroid Ryugu. On October 3, 2018 at 01:57 UTC the tiny lander, no bigger than a microwave oven, released from the “Hayabusa-2” space probe as the Japanese mothership maneuvered to a point just 51 meters from Ryugu. Six minutes later, the tumbling lander made first contact with the asteroid’s surface — at 02: 03 UTC — and bounced several times, as intended, before coming to a stop and kicking off a pre-programmed automated science campaign.

On September 29, 2018 American astronaut Richard Alan Searfoss passed away. He was 62. Rick Searfoss performed three Space Shuttle missions STS-58, STS-76 and STS-90 during the 1990s.

On September 29, 2018, at 04:13 the “Kuaizhou-1A” rocket-carrier was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, Gansu Province, the northwest of China. The solid-fueled rocket-carrier orbited the “СеntiSpace-1-s1” satellite, a technology demonstrator for a space-based network in development by Beijing Future Navigation Technology Co. Ltd. to augment satellite navigation services.