News Mash-up: Space

Russia planning to launch own space station Russia is ready to start building its own space station with the aim of launching it into orbit by 2030 if President Vladimir Putin gives the go-ahead, the head of its Roscosmos space agency said on April 21. The project would mark a new chapter for Russian space exploration and an end to more than two decades of close cooperation with the United States aboard the aging International Space Station. Russian cosmonauts have worked with counterparts from the U.S. and 16 other countries aboard the ISS since 1998 — one of the closest fields of cooperation between Moscow and Washington, whose relations are currently in deep crisis over human rights and a range of other issues. (Reuters) Chinese rocket debris lands in Indian Ocean Remnants of China’s biggest rocket landed in the Indian Ocean on May 9, with most of its components destroyed upon reentry into the atmosphere, ending days of speculation over where the debris would hit but drawing U.S. criticism over lack of transparency. The coordinates given by Chinese state media, citing the China Manned Space Engineering Office, put the point of impact in the ocean, west of the Maldives archipelago. The debris is from the Long March 5B, which blasted off from China’s Hainan island on April 29. (Reuters) These articles were provided by The Japan Times Alpha.