Review of three human exploration elements kicks off next week

HOUSTON — U.S. and Russian medical experts will draw from seven broad areas as they establish a research agenda in early 2013 for a one-year mission aboard the International Space Station flown by NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko, test cosmonaut from RSC Energia. The ISS veterans were selected in late November by the U.S. and Russian space agencies to train for the long flight expected to launch in March 2015 and potentially reveal health or performance concerns for future human deep space exploration.

planet candidates: NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has discovered 461 new planet candidates, NASA announced Jan. 7. Four are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit in their respective stars’ “habitable zone” in which liquid water can exist on the surface, the agency says. The observations, gathered from May 2009 to March 2011, “show a steady increase in the number of smaller-size planet candidates and the number of stars with more than one candidate,” NASA says.

A new “block buy” deal for the U.S. Air Force to buy the next two satellites designed by Lockheed Martin to provide nuclear-hardened communications for the president and military commanders is estimated to save the government almost $1.5 billion. But the cost of each Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite, used for routine secure communications globally as well as presidential command and control of nuclear forces, still exceeds the $1 billion mark.

Water may have interacted with Martian crust as recently as 2.1 billion years ago

HOUSTON — Robonaut 2, a NASA and General Motors collaboration to develop an astronaut-friendly humanoid, is due a pair of legs and a battery backpack later this year to give it more mobility inside and eventually outside the International Space Station. The two-armed, camera and force-sensor-laced torso launched to the station aboard a February 2011 space shuttle mission. It has been restrained to a stanchion in the station’s U.S. Destiny laboratory since it was awakened electronically for the first time late the following August.

Reaffirms support for mix of government, commercial human spaceflight

HOUSTON — Astronauts assigned to multi-month or multi-year missions to near-Earth asteroids and Mars may face an accelerated onset of Alzheimer’s-like symptoms from cosmic radiation exposure, according to a NASA-funded study by researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) that used mice as subjects.