SCIENCE BOND

Their 340-day mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS) is twice the length of a normal stay. Their extended tour is part of an effort to study the effects of long-duration spaceflight on the body. But scientists will gain further insights by comparing Scott Kelly with his Earthbound identical twin, Mark. Soyuz capsule carrying Kelly, Kornienko and Russian crew member Sergey Volkov parachuted down on to a steppe in Kazakhstan at 10:26 local time (04:26 GMT).  The mission is a record for the ISS and will give Cmdr Kelly a tally of 520 cumulative days in space, over four flights.  Cmdr Kelly has also returned rocket (salad) seeds that were taken up to the orbiting outpost by UK astronaut Tim Peake in December. They will be distributed to schools to allow pupils to compare their growth with rocket plants that have stayed on Earth. The idea behind the twin study is to help minimise extraneous factors as scientists research how genetically identical individual...

Europe's Lisa Pathfinder (LPF) probe is engaging in a series of experiments roughly 1.5 million km from Earth.  The project has heightened interest, of course, because of the first sampling of the "cosmic ripples" made by ground-based detectors last September  A successful demo for LPF would pave the way for a fully operational orbiting observatory in the 2030s.  This would likely be known simply as Lisa - the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna.  "It's a wonderful time right now," said Paul McNamara, the European Space Agency's (Esa) project scientist on Lisa Pathfinder.  "I've spent my entire career in this endeavour, and for years we were told - even ridiculed in some cases - that gravitational waves don't exist, or that we'd never find them. "Well, now we have found them, and we're about to take the next big, big step towards building a mission that could detect them in space.The Earth-bound laser interferometers sit...

Astronauts Tim Kopra and Scott Kelly, from the US space agency Nasa, are going outside the ISS to fix a broken component.  As they suited up and prepared to go out into space, they received assistance from Tim Peake and Sergey Volkov.  Mr Peake arrived at the ISS on Tuesday.  He is the first UK astronaut to be selected by the European Space Agency and will spend six months aboard the space stationThe space walk was due to start at 13:10 GMT (08:10 EST) and should last between three and three-and-a-half hours, Nasa said.  But the astronauts' preparations proceeded faster than expected and the walk commenced at about 12:45 GMT."It will be a very busy and interesting day for Tim," said Libby Jackson from the UK Space Agency.  The space walk is the seventh time ISS crew members have ventured outside in 2015.  It is taking place so the astronauts can try to fix a stalled component called the "mobile transporter" - a rail car that moves a robotic arm up an...

Tim Peake Mr Peake told  that he is going to the orbiting lab primarily to do science, but that his priority will be to share his experiences.  He believes his mission can inspire more young people to become interested in science and engineering.  Mr Peake's six-month stint on the station begins in December when he leaves Earth on a Russian Soyuz rocket.  The Union flag is going to be flown and worn in space againTim Peake, on being British  "The legacy I hope is that this will inspire a new generation to look at science, to look at space, as an exciting career path, and to make choices that push them in that direction," he said.  Friday saw him go in front of the media in his home country for the final time before his great adventure gets under way. He now heads to Moscow to complete final training, before then flying to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for the launch.  Not having fresh air for 6 months is what I'll miss mostTim Peak...

It will be one of a series of missions that prepares for the return of humans to the surface and a possible permanent settlement.  The spacecraft will assess whether there is water, and raw materials to make fuel and oxygen. We  have obtained exclusive details of the mission, called Luna 27, which is set for launch in five years' time.  The mission is one of a series led by the Russian federal space agency, Roscosmos, to go back to the Moon.These ventures will continue where the exploration programme that was halted by the Soviet Union in the mid 1970s left off, according to Prof Igor Mitrofanov, of the Space Research Institute in Moscow, who is one of the lead scientists.  But unlike efforts in the 1960s and 70s, when the Soviet Union was working in competition with the US and other nations, he added, "we have to work together with our international colleagues"."We have to go to the Moon. The 21st Century will be the century when it will be the permanent outpos...