Crew-12 Heads Home From ISS & South Korea's Nuri Launches NEONSAT - Space News (Oct 7, 2026)

Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - KrispCall: Agentic Cloud Telephony - https://try.krispcall.com/tad - Invest Like the Pros with StockMVP - https://www.stock-mvp.com/?via=ron - Consensus: AI for Research. Get a free month - https://get.consensus.app/automated_daily Support The Automated Daily directly: Buy me a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/theautomateddaily Today's topics: Crew-12 Heads Home From ISS - NASA's SpaceX Crew-12 astronauts prepare to undock Crew Dragon Freedom from the International Space Station after nearly ten months in orbit. Splashdown off California is targeted for 8 October 2026. South Korea's Nuri Launches NEONSAT - South Korea's Nuri rocket completed its fifth launch, deploying five NEONSAT Earth-observation microsatellites and ten CubeSats. The flight is a milestone for the country's domestic satellite constellation. Long Spaceflights Raise Hip Fractures - A NASA Johnson Space Center analysis links missions longer than 90 days to higher hip fracture rates in astronauts. Astronauts averaging 62.5 years old showed rates exceeding those of people aged 70 to 79. Webb Reveals NGC 7129 Nursery - New James Webb Space Telescope infrared imagery of NGC 7129 shows protostars, stellar jets, and photodissociation regions. The stellar nursery lies about 3,300 light-years away. Pa 30: Medieval Supernova Remnant - NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day features Pa 30, a filamentary Type Iax supernova remnant. It is linked to a guest star that medieval astronomers recorded in 1181 CE. Geomagnetic Storm Watch, Aurora Chances - NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center issued a G2 geomagnetic storm watch for 9 October 2026 following a CME from Active Region 4549. Auroras may be visible across parts of the northern United States. Curiosity Captures Martian Dawn Yardangs - NASA's Curiosity rover captured a six-image dawn panorama of wind-carved yardangs on Mount Sharp. The image preserves natural early-morning Martian color tones. Juice Slingshots Past Earth - ESA's Juice spacecraft flew 8,640 km above Earth in a gravity assist that boosted its speed by about 3.5 km/s. The flyby also tested its instruments on the way to Jupiter's icy moons. Building Infrastructure for Lunar Bases - NASA is funding a lunar 5G and Wi-Fi 6 network, an Aerospace Power Systems Laboratory, and the Lunar Grounding Challenge. It also selected the GIMLI project to study a possible lava tube at the Marius Hills Pit. Probing the Early Universe - The MEGATRON simulations, JWST chemical enrichment findings, Roman Space Telescope milestones, and the CosmoCube mission are reshaping how scientists understand the first stars and the cosmic dark ages. ISS Cargo and Post-ISS Future - Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL prepares to depart the ISS as SpaceX's CRS-35 cargo mission targets 13 October. ESA has also signed an MoU with Vast for commercial stations after the ISS era. Episode Transcript Crew-12 Heads Home From ISS We start in low Earth orbit, where NASA's SpaceX Crew-12 is wrapping up nearly ten months aboard the International Space Station. NASA's Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA's Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev launched on 13 February 2026 and served on Expedition 75. Hatch closure was planned for around 6:20 a.m. Eastern on 7 October, with undocking around 8:05 a.m. Splashdown off California is targeted for 8 October at about 11:34 a.m. Eastern, depending on the weather. One crew member said what they look forward to most is simply seeing nature again. Seven residents will remain aboard the station to continue health research and other science. NASA will hold a post-flight press conference at 1:15 p.m. Eastern on 8 October. South Korea's Nuri Launches NEONSAT Meanwhile, South Korea's Nuri rocket completed its fifth flight. It lifted off from the Naro Space Center in Goheung at 12:25 p.m. local time carrying fifteen satellites. Five NEONSAT microsatellites were released one at a time, about 35 to 40 seconds apart, at roughly 570 kilometers altitude. Ten CubeSats followed in pairs. Each NEONSAT weighs under 100 kilograms and can resolve objects about one meter across in black and white. This is the first time Nuri has deployed several primary satellites built for the same mission. Five more NEONSATs are planned for next year, completing a ten-satellite constellation that will pass over the Korean Peninsula more than three times a day to monitor disasters and security incidents. Long Spaceflights Raise Hip Fractures Now for the sobering health story. A team at NASA's Johnson Space Center reviewed fracture records from American astronauts' annual medical exams between 2018 and 2022. After missions longer than 90 days, hip fracture rates rose significantly. They were higher than the same astronauts' rates in periods without long missions. They were also higher than rates among non-astronauts aged 70 to 79, even though the astronauts averaged about 62.5 years old. The statistical evidence was