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