Massimo Luciani

The taikonauts Ye Guangfu, Li Cong, and Li Guangsu after the end of the Shenzhou 18 mission (Photo courtesy Xinhua/Li Xin)

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It was night in China when the three Chinese taikonauts of the Shenzhou 18 mission returned to Earth after spending a little more than six months on the Chinese space station Tiangong, where they arrived on April 25. The three taikonauts Ye Guangfu, Li Cong, and Li Guangsu had left the station about nine hours earlier to land at a site called Dongfeng in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. It’s a procedure that significantly reduces the time to return to Earth and now has become routine.

The Shenzhou 19 mission launches atop a Long March-2F rocket (Photo courtesy Wang Jiangbo/Xinhua)

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A confirmation has arrived that three Chinese taikonauts from the Shenzhou 19 mission reached the Chinese space station Tiangong with an automated docking maneuver. They blasted off about 6.5 hours earlier atop a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. They form the 8th crew of the Chinese space station and will remain there for about six months, the standard duration for a mission.

The galaxy NGC 1386

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An article published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” reports a study of the galaxy NGC 1386 that shows that star formation processes are taking place in its central regions despite the fact that it contains mostly old stars. A team of researchers led by astronomer Almudena Prieto of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in Spain combined observations conducted in visible light and near-infrared with ESO’s VST and in radio waves with the ALMA radio telescope to study those processes that are bringing about a sort of rejuvenation within NGC 1386.

The Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft loaded onto the MV Megan ship after splashdown (Image NASA TV)

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A little while ago, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft concluded its Crew-8, or SpaceX Crew-8, mission for NASA by landing without problems. On board were astronauts Matthew Dominick, Mike Barratt, and Jeanette Epps and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, who had reached the International Space Station on March 5, 2024, and were part of Expedition 70/71/72. The four of them finished the 8th regular crewed mission of SpaceX in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Florida. The Crew Dragon departed the Station about 34 hours earlier.

Shortly after the splashdown, SpaceX’s “MV Megan” ship went to recover the Endeavour and its crew to transport them to the coast. The astronauts also received their first medical checkup aboard the ship.

The star cluster NGC 602 (Image ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Zeidler, E. Sabbi, A. Nota, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb))

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An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports the identification of 64 brown dwarf candidates in the star cluster NGC 602 in the Small Magellanic Cloud, one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies. A team of researchers used the James Webb Space Telescope to obtain the sensitivity and resolution needed to detect possible objects halfway between the planet and the star about 200,000 light-years away. Follow-up studies are needed to verify these candidates, the first brown dwarfs to be verified outside the Milky Way. NGC 602 is poor in elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, a condition that was normal when the universe was young, further reason for interest in studying the processes within the cluster.