AS YOU read, Space Shuttle Atlantis stands on Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Centre, its black nose pointed towards the heavens, one last mission beckoning.

A PRIVATE company launched a spacecraft into orbit and then, in a historic first, guided it back to Earth yesterday in a bold test for NASA that could lead to the first commercial space station supply run next year and eventual astronaut rides.

IN a highly anticipated grand finale to their mission, astronauts opened the shutters on the International Space Station’s new observation deck yesterday and were humbled by “absolutely spectacular” views of Earth from inside the elaborate atrium of windows.

A Russian space official said the Soyuz capsule with circus tycoon Guy Laliberte, a Russian cosmonaut and US astronauts, landed in Kazakhstan.

Europe's most ambitious space project has been successfully launched.

IRELAND’S adopted astronaut returned to Earth after 101 days in space yesterday to an emotional reunion with his wife and children.

Billionaire software engineer Charles Simonyi, on the verge of blasting off as the world’s fifth paying private space traveller, said today he hopes his journey will help develop civilian space flights.

A former executive of a troubled Japanese internet start-up has been selected to become the nation’s first space tourist.

DISCOVERY’S astronauts started to inspect their spaceship for launch damage yesterday, delicately operating a 100-foot movable arm with lasers and a camera mounted on its tip.

US PRESIDENT George W Bush urged the US “forward into the universe” last night, outlining a costly new effort to return Americans to the moon as early as 2015 and use it as a way-station to Mars and beyond.

AN American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut boarded a space station 250 miles above earth yesterday, relieving a three-man crew forced to stay an extra two months in space as a result of the US Columbia tragedy.

Nasa has closed one of the space shuttle's three international emergency landing sites because of security concerns.

Space tourist Dennis Tito is preparing for his return to the pull of gravity and the glare of celebrity.