Astronaut

Today marks the 41st anniversary of the flight of the first Bulgarian astronaut Georgi Ivanov.

On April 10, 1979, at 8 pm and 34 minutes Moscow time, a Soyuz-33 spacecraft with an international crew was launched into orbit around the Earth: flight commander Nikolai Rukavishnikov and astronaut-researcher Georgi Ivanov.

Astronauts having a roast on their menu is getting closer, after a successful experiment. A 3D printer creates meat aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The bioprinter produces beef, rabbit and fish tissue using magnetic fields in microgravity, said the Russian medical technology company involved in the experiment.

Bulgarians have created a mobile application for space exploration. It  contains a library of education videos that is larger than those on the sites of the European Space Agency and NASA, taken together. The app is available in Bulgarian and English.

US space agency NASA believes it can put humans on Mars within 25 years but the technological and medical hurdles are immense, reported Aljazeera.

Deadly radiation from the cosmos, potential vision loss, and atrophying bones are just some of the challenges scientists must overcome before any future astronaut can set foot on the Red Planet, top NASA officials said on Tuesday.

On April 12 the whole World celebrates an Aviation and Cosmonautics Day - a date to commemorate the first ever flight of human in space. On April 12, 1961 a citizen of the Soviet Union, first lieutenant Yuri Gagarin orbited the Erath onboard "Vostok" spacecraft for the first time in mankind history, thus opening the era of manned space missions.

Scott and Mark Kelly are identical twin brothers — at least, they were until Scott spent a year living in space.

China will begin recruiting civilian astronauts for its military-backed space program and plans to increase the number of crewed missions to around two a year, a top official with the country’s space program said.

U.S. astronaut John Young, who walked on the moon in 1972 and even smuggled a corned beef sandwich into orbit during a career that made him the only person to fly with three NASA space programs, has died at age 87, officials said on Jan. 6.

A three-man space crew featuring American and Japanese rookie astronauts as well as an experienced Russian cosmonaut blasted off on Dec. 17 for a six-month mission at the International Space Station (ISS).      

Russian astronaut Anton Shkplelerov told the Tass news agency that he found extraterrestrial bacteria on the outer shell of the International Space Station (ISS) a few years ago. He claims to have discovered the bacteria during the sampling of the station's body.