A US software billionaire who won a junior cosmonaut contest as a child in Communist-ruled Hungary returned from a dream voyage to the international space station today, riding a Russian capsule to a soft landing on the Kazakh steppe along with a Russian and an American who spent seven months in orbit.

A US astronaut and his Russian crewmate ventured outside the international space station today for a strenuous six-hour spacewalk intended to fix a faulty antenna.

Two astronauts stepped outside the hatch today for the second of what could be a precedent-setting three spacewalks in nine days, making repairs to the international space station’s cooling system.

Astronaut Robert Curbeam is poised to set a new record next week when he is scheduled to embark on his fourth spacewalk of the space shuttle Discovery mission, this one to work on a stalled solar panel.

Flashes of flame from space shuttle Discovery lit up the darkened sky as the space shuttle blazed off the launch pad for the first night-time lift-off in four years.