By Agence France-Presse

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan–Malaysia’s first astronaut was to blast off on Wednesday on a space voyage seen as breaking new boundaries for the Asian nation and for space travel by Muslims.

Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor was to lift off from the Baikonur cosmodrome at 1322 GMT in a Russian Soyuz rocket headed for the International Space Station (ISS) with Russian cosmonaut Yury Malenchenko and American Peggy Whitson.

He was to spend about nine days on the ISS, arriving at the orbiting station near the end of the holy month of Ramadan and staying there for the Eid festival, when he will treat the long-term crew to festive Malaysian food.

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By Agence France-Presse

TOKYO–Japan’s first lunar probe successfully entered the moon’s orbit on the most extensive mission there since the US Apollo program, officials said Friday.

The Kaguya probe, which was launched last month on a domestically developed rocket, appears to be functioning normally, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said.

“We have confirmed that the satellite’s condition is normal,” it added.

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By Mira Oberman
Agence France-Presse

CHICAGO–Snuggled into a huge belt of warm dust, an Earth-like planet appears to be forming some 424 light years away, scientists said Wednesday.

At somewhere between 10 and 16 million years old, the planet’s solar system is still in its “very young adolescence,” but is at the perfect age for forming Earth-like planets, said lead researcher Carey Lisse of Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory.

The massive dust ring surrounding one of the system’s two stars is smack in the middle of the system’s “habitable zone” where water could one day exist on a rocky planet.

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AS we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik launch, which marked the dawn of the Space Age and the start of the Space Race, it seems fitting that several nations are eyeing a return to the moon.

What’s also interesting is that the US, which sent men to the moon in response to the shock of seeing the USSR take the lead in the Space Race with the launch of Sputnik, is practically conceding that China might beat it back to the moon.

Here’s an excerpt from the Discovery Channel article:

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HERE’S a great video from ReelNASA that shows the two solid rocket boosters that power the Space Shuttle.

Follow their journey from launch to splashdown.