but gerst's mission has reached its end.f all goes to plan, he will land in the plains of kazakhstan early thursday morning. brent: back here on earth, it is over to christoph now, and the rates rise fed watchers were anticipating. christoph: that's right. just over an hour ago, the u.s. federal reserve made the announcement that it has hiked its benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point to a range between 2.25% and 2.5%. u.s. fed chairman jerome powell said the central bank expected the economy to continue performing well next year, but it projects just two rate hikes in 2019 amid concerns about the trade dispute with china and signs of slowing gbal trade and economic growth. higher interest rates tend to weigh on economic growth because they make it more expensive for businesses and consumers to borrow money. so for more, let's cross over to our man on wall street, jens korte. jens, the fed expects growth to slow somewhat at least, to moderate. why does it still raise rates? jens: yeah, it is not that ther

commander alexander gerst is handing over command before he returns to earth.he new commander and a bell is rung. no sign of that yet. commander gerst tweeted earlier, "on thursday, i will hitch a lift on this satellite, coming back home as a shooting star. i will miss this place!" that is one of the views that he has as he orbits the earth. whilst in orbit, he‘s been tweeting pictures of the earth‘s surface as seen from space including the mouth of the amazon river and the almost featureless landscape of the australian outback, which he described as "one of the most interesting looking landscapes on our planet". well, as those of you and all strut it will know, there is an awful lot of red in the outback and that comes across if you are out in space too. we will keep an eye on what is happening, a handover of one commander to another seems to be going very smoothly at the moment. speaking of hangovers, there is another one coming at matches are united. jose mourinho kicked out, the worst are to a season in 28 yea rs. we the worst are to a season in 28 years. w