New Astronauts

NASA has selected eight new astronauts-- four men and four women.  They will be added to the 49 already in the astronaut corps.

Witth any luck, some or all of this new class will fly deep space exploration missions-- to an asteroid, to the  Moon, or possibly even to Mars.

Valentina Tereshkova

Fifty years ago today, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova launched into space, becoming the first woman in space.  It was her only mission.

The early Soviet human spaceflight program emphasized firsts-- first man, first woman, first two man crew, first three man crew-- to score political propaganda points.  It came at a cost, however.  By doing such missions for political reasons instead of focusing on the step-by-step development of spaceflight capability, the Soviets lost their lead in manned space sooner than they might have.

503 More

NASA's Kepler planet hunting spacecraft is currently out of commission, but by going over data already collected scientists have found 503 more possible exoplanets, bringing Kepler's total to well over three thousand.  Some of the new finds orbit within their star's habitable zones.

Scientists say they have enough data to go through to continue making discoveries for two more years.

Plastic As Radiation Shield

One of the major remaining problems in seriously planning deep space human missions is protecting the crews from radiation.  Plastic, coupled with reducing flight times, might do the job.

Lab experiments have shown that plastic is good at blocking harmful radiation, and now NASA has data from its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that plastic is a good shield in deep space, too.

Double Star Life

New work suggests that planets orbiting double stars might have a small edge when it comes to supporting life.

It seems that closely matched stars that orbit each other in between 10 and 30 days tend to cancel out each other's solar winds of deadly radiation, thus making rocky planets in the system's habitable zone more likely to develop life.

Fusion Rockets

NASA is looking at various propulsion technologies that would drastically cut flight times for human missions to the planets.  Perhaps the most promising of those is a rocket powered by nuclear fusion.  Such a rocket could take humans to Mars in one month, or to Saturn in two.

Of course, we can't yet build fusion reactors even on Earth, but NASA is hopeful a fusion rocket research program could lead to breakthroughs.

Shengzhou 10

China launched its fifth manned space mission earlier today.  Shengzhou 10 has a three person crew and was launched atop the most powerful yet used for a Chinese manned flight.

Shengzhou 10 is scheduled to last 15 days and include two dockings with the Tiangong 1 space station module-- one automatic and one manual-- as China continues to develop the capabilities needed for more challenging future missions.