A Russian Soyuz FG rocket carrying a veteran cosmonaut and a NASA astronaut on his first space flight blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Thursday for a trip to the International Space Station, but the booster suffered an apparent failure shortly after liftoff, triggering an emergency abort and descent to Earth. 

It's go time for NASA's stratospheric airborne science team. On Monday, a total solar eclipse will travel coast-to-coast in the U.S. for the first time in 99 years. Pilots at Ellington Field, next door to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, are going on an atmospheric research flight. Their rides: 1960s-era former bomber jets, called WB-57s.