Science News Roundup: NASA astronaut confident about December launch, Frigid planet detected

After the aborted mission, NASA astronaut confident about December launch

The American astronaut who will hitch the first ride on a Russian rocket since last month's aborted launch and dramatic emergency landing is confident that her scheduled trip in December on a rocket that she calls a "workhorse" will go smoothly. Astronaut Anne McClain, along with a Russian cosmonaut and a Canadian astronaut, will man the Dec. 3 mission. It will be the Russian-made Soyuz-FG's first crewed flight since Oct. 11, when U.S. astronaut Nick Hague and a Russian cosmonaut landed unharmed on the Kazakh desert steppe after the rocket bound for the International Space Station failed in mid-air two minutes after liftoff.

Frigid planet detected orbiting a nearby star

A frozen and dimly lit planet dubbed a "Super-Earth," may be orbiting the closest single star to our solar system, astronomers said on Wednesday, based on two decades of scientific observations. The planet, estimated to be at least 3.2 times more massive than Earth, was spotted circling Barnard's Star, a type of relatively cool and low-mass star called a red dwarf, about 6 light-years away from our solar system, comparatively close in cosmic terms. It is believed to orbit Barnard's Star every 233 days.

'We trust our rocket', the crew says ahead of first space launch since failure

A U.S. astronaut said on Thursday she had full confidence in the safety of the Russian-made Soyuz rocket that will blast a three-person crew into space next month in the first such launch since a rocket failure. Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and U.S. and Canadian astronauts Anne McClain and David Saint-Jacques are due to embark for the International Space Station on Dec. 3 after a similar launch on Oct. 11 ended in an emergency landing.

(With inputs from Reuters)

(With inputs from agencies.)