In Today’s Deep Space Extra… Three ISS crew members return to Earth after 139 days on space station. Astronomers identify a second star with eight planets. The solar system’s minor planet Ceres offers more evidence it was once an ocean world.

Human Space Exploration

Soyuz MS-05 crew returns to Earth safely after 139 days on space station

CollectSpace.com (12/14): Three International Space Station crewmembers from Russia, Italy and the U.S. are back on earth after landing safely on Thursday. Russian cosmonaut Sergey Ryazanskiy, Paolo Nespoli of the European Space Agency (ESA) and astronaut Randy Bresnik of NASA touched down on Russia’s Soyuz MS-05 spacecraft, landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan at 3:37 a.m. EST (0837 GMT; 2:37 p.m. local Kazakh time).

 

Space Science

Record Breaker! 8th alien planet found around distant star

Space.com (12/14): A distant solar system, Kepler-90, has eight planets orbiting, NASA announced on Thursday. The discovery was made possible with NASA’s Kepler space telescope plus Google machine learning applications. This ties the star with ours in terms of planet population. The solar system’s population was reduced from nine to eight, when experts determined distant Pluto was a minor planet and not a planet.

Dawn to fly closer to Ceres than ever in mission’s final phase

Space News (12/14): Launched in 2007, NASA’s Dawn mission spacecraft has been orbiting the dwarf planet/main belt asteroid Ceres since spring of 2015. The twice-extended Dawn mission spacecraft is set to dip closer to the surface to determine whether distant and icy Ceres is geologically active and ultimately whether it hosts, or once hosted, a potentially habitable environment.

Dwarf planet Ceres’ bright spots suggest an ancient ocean

Space.com (12/14): Ceres’ intriguing bright spots could be the salty remnants of a global ocean that gradually froze away. The findings were presented by scientists attending this week’s meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans. The findings were gathered with NASA’s Dawn mission currently orbiting Ceres, a dwarf planet in the main asteroid belt.

Saturn’s rings are surprisingly young and may be from shredded moons

Science News (12/14): Giant Saturn is famous for its ring system. It turns out the structures are relatively young, perhaps a few hundred million years old, according to data from the recently concluded NASA led Cassini mission. The origin of the rings remains a mystery. However, scientists believe their source may be a moon that was torn apart. The findings were presented this week at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans.

The ISS bacterial community resembles what you’d find in your home

Seeker.com (12/6): The microbial environment found aboard the International Space Station is similar to that found in a typical living room, according to a recently published study led by a University of California scientist.

 

Other News

Get a dummy’s-eye view of a suborbital ride on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin spaceship

GeekWire (12/15): Blue Origins’ suborbital New Shepard rocket could soon be sending researchers and tourists on rocket rides. A video camera, revealing what it might be like to launch aboard the spacecraft with its six large windows, rode along during a test flight from West Texas earlier this week. Mannequin Skywalker, an instrumented test dummy, also rode on the flight.

SpaceIL making final fundraising push for lunar lander mission

Space News (12/14): Israel is very interested in joining the global space exploration community. That’s why the country’s Google Lunar X Prize competitor, SpaceIL, is attempting to raise a quick $7.5 million to preserve its attempt to win a global competition to place a rover on the lunar surface and transmit data back to Earth.

Three companies tapped to produce prototypes for NASA’s `FabLab’ initiative

Spaceflightinsider.com (12/14): NASA has selected three companies under its Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships initiative to develop prototypes of machines for in space on demand fabrication. Interlog Corporation of Anaheim, California; Techshot, Inc. of Greenville, Indiana; and Tethers Unlimited, Inc. of Bothell, Washington, will participate in the $10.2 million NASA project

Astronauts will watch ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ in space!

Space.com (12/14): The latest chapter in the popular Star Wars film series, “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” opens in theaters Friday. A digital version has also been provided to the crew of the International Space Station. Three of the six space station crew descended safely to Earth early Thursday. U.S., Russian and Japanese replacements Scott Tingle, Anton Shkaplerov and Norishige Kanai are to launch from Kazakhstan aboard a Soyuz rocket on Sunday at 2:21 a.m., EST. They will dock with the space station early Tuesday.