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HOUSTON — NASA’s Human Research Program has selected 10 medical and psychological studies of identical astronaut twins Scott and Mark Kelly as Scott launches in March 2015 on a one-year mission to the International Space Station—the longest spaceflight ever by an American, and a voyage intended to establish a health care baseline for future missions beyond Earth orbit.

New green propulsion technology developed by Swedish Space Corp.’s Ecaps division will help enable Skybox Imaging to sell black-and-white images at resolutions well below 1 meter, positioning the Mountain View, Calif.-based startup to compete with established remote-sensing service providers in the U.S., Europe and Israel.

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HOUSTON — U.S. and Russian crewmembers departed the International Space Station late March 10, leaving the six-person orbiting science laboratory with its first Japanese commander in charge. The returning astronauts descended safely to Earth aboard the Soyuz TMA-10M spacecraft for a touchdown on the frigid, snow-blown plains of southern Kazakhstan.

JEJU, South Korea — The Korean Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) plans to launch a one-off rocket in 2017 to test its Woorae-1 rocket engine, the key technology of its forthcoming KSLV-II space launcher. The KSLV-II, a largely indigenous successor to the much smaller Russo-Korean KSLV-I launched between 2009 and 2013, is due to make its first flight in 2020.

International Launch Services (ILS) is poised to benefit from new satellite export loan guarantees to be made available through the new Export Insurance Agency of Russia (Exiar), which will operate similarly to France’s Coface, ILS President Phil Slack said March 10.

A NASA-backed team is at work on advanced space-telescope technology that may allow researchers to measure the atmospheric composition of extra solar planets directly, by blocking the instrument-blinding direct light of a target star. NASA and Orbital Sciences Corp. are developing a spacecraft, set for launch in 2017, that is designed to add to the catalogue of exoplanets generated by NASA’s Kepler space telescope and by ground-based instruments.