HOUSTON — NASA’s Johnson Space Center and Deloitte LLP will pursue a long-running collaboration to advance safety and risk management practices for the oil and gas industry under a June 27 strategic agreement. The effort, in part, will focus on low-probability, high-consequence events that can occur in remote and harsh environments, like those faced by U.S. astronauts currently on the International Space Station and prospective missions of deep-space exploration.

NEW DELHI — India has plans to loft two new satellites over the next two years to boost its communications capability and augment current services. A proposal for the development and launch of GSAT-15 and-16 was approved at a June 28 meeting of the federal cabinet, says India’s finance minister, P. Chidambaram. GSAT-15 is expected to be built within the next 18 months, and GSAT-16 in the next 24 months.

SAN FRANCISCO — NASA reports “a great insertion orbit” for its newest orbiting telescope for studying the Sun’s dynamic temperature bands, which was drop-launched from a former airliner off the central California coast at 7:28 p.m. PDT June 27.

Boeing 747SP-based instrument will travel to southern hemisphere

PARIS — Thales Alenia Space of France and Italy will lead development of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) new Euclid cosmology satellite under a contract valued at €322.5 million ($420 million), the company announced June 27. Scheduled to launch in 2020 atop a European variant of Russia’s Soyuz, Euclid will explore dark energy and dark matter using a payload module to be built by EADS Astrium of Toulouse that includes a silicon-carbide telescope for infrared measurements and a 1.2-meter-dia. mirror to observe distant galaxies.

European space agencies will evaluate possible role

The medium Earth orbit constellation designed to bring broadband satellite service to the “other 3 billion” (O3b) customers in the developing world is taking shape above the equator with the June 25 launch of the first four spacecraft on an Arianespace Soyuz flying from the Guiana Space Center on the north coast of South America. Another set of four satellites is scheduled for launch later this year, and the third and final group of four is set to go up in the first half of next year.

Shenzhou 10, China’s longest human mission to date, ended safely early Wednesday with a landing on a Mongolian steppe. Touchdown of the mission’s return capsule with its crew of two men and a woman came at 8:07 a.m. local time (8:07 p.m. Tuesday EDT), 15 days after it was launched from the Jiuquan launch site on a Long March 2F rocket.