Astronauts exit capsule

China is to send its second woman astronaut into orbit on its longest mission yet, space officials said Monday, as the country works towards building a space station. The Shenzhou-10 -- the name means "Divine Vessel" -- will be launched on a Long March rocket at 0938 GMT Tuesday, Wu Ping, spokeswoman for China's manned space programme, told a news conference.

Three Chinese astronauts on Monday entered an orbiting module for the first time, in a move broadcast live on China's state television network and a key step towards the nation's first space station.The astronauts, two men and a woman, passed into the Tiangong-1 ("Heavenly Palace") module a little under three hours after it docked with the Shenzhou-9 ("Divine Vessel") spacecraft.The Shenzhou-9 took off Saturday carrying the first Chinese woman to go into space, before undergoing the third automatic docking China has ever performed, and the first for a manned mission.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A private rocket blasted off Friday on a supply run to the International Space Station. The unmanned Falcon rocket is owned by the SpaceX company. The Dragon capsule on board is filled with more than a ton of space station supplies and experiments. NASA is paying SpaceX to deliver cargo to the space station, and bring back science samples and other goods. This will be the company’s third delivery mission.

PASADENA, Calif. — Surrounded by engineers, NASA chief Charles Bolden inspected a prototype spacecraft engine that could power an audacious mission to lasso an asteroid and tow it closer to Earth for astronauts to explore. Bolden checked on the progress Thursday a month after the Obama administration unveiled its 2014 budget that proposes $105-million to jumpstart the mission, which may eventually cost more than $2.6-billion.

Astronauts on the International Space Station will get a fun addition to their space home-away-from-home in 2015. Their new annex is an inflatable balloon to be clamped to the side of the ISS first as a test, then be used as extra storage room.

The Soyuz capsule failed Friday to undock for the first time in a decade of flights to the International Space Station, forcing three crew members to remain an extra day in orbit.The Russian mission control centre near Moscow said the shuttle's return to Earth was rolled back to Saturday over fears that the capsule was not fully airlocked after a computer malfunction."The landing of the Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft and crew... has been pushed back by 24 hours to Saturday September 25 due to technical problems," Russia's space agency chief Anatoly Perminov said in a statement.

NASA announced Tuesday that it signed a contract with the Russian space agency to shuttle US astronauts to the orbiting International Space Station.The 335 million dollar contract extension is for the "transportation, rescue and related services" of US crew bound for the ISS in 2013, NASA said in a statement.The contract "covers comprehensive Soyuz support, including all necessary training and preparation for launch, crew rescue, and landing of a long-duration mission for six individual station crew members."

The Soyuz spacecraft carrying US astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko undocked Saturday from the International Space Station after an initial failure, Russian mission control center said."The spaceship undocked on time and without any glitches," the mission control press service said.The Soyuz capsule failed Friday to undock for the first time in a decade of flights to the International Space Station, forcing the three crew members to remain an extra day in orbit.