Earth Launches and Landings (contributed by Jason Davis)

The International Space Station crew roster returns to full strength this month, when NASA's Kate Rubins, JAXA's Takuya Onishi, and Anatoli Ivanishin of Roscosmos launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on July 7 at 1:36 UTC (9:36 p.m. EDT July 6). This will be the first crewed flight of the upgraded Soyuz MS series spacecraft. As such, Russian flight controllers in Korolyov are sending the crew on a slower, two-day rendezvous trajectory, allowing ample time to test out the vehicle's new subsystems. The new crew will arrive on July 9.

The Progress MS cargo freighter, which is currently attached to the station's Pirs docking port, will perform an undocking and re-docking test today (July 1), before leaving the ISS for good on July 3. The spacecraft will then be destructively de-orbited over the South Pacific.

There may also be a three-day cargo logistics flurry later in the month. On July 17, Progress MS-03 launches from Baikonur on a two-day trip to the station. The very next day, SpaceX's CRS-9 Dragon cargo spacecraft may launch from Florida. That would put Progress's arrival date at July 19, and Dragon's at July 20.

Dragon is bringing a new International Docking Adapter for future commercial crew vehicles in its trunk (the last IDA was lost during the 2015 Falcon 9 disaster). A spacewalk to complete installation of the IDA wouldn't likely be scheduled until August, NASA officials say.

Beyond ISS traffic, July looks to be a quiet month. The classified NROL-61 mission launches atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V from Cape Canaveral on July 28. (The National Reconnaissance Office is known for their outlandish mission patches, but seriously, don't miss this one).

Spaceflight Now also reports China may launch a technology demonstrator satellite this month that will test out secure quantum communications.

Inner Solar System

In orbit at Venus, Akatsuki successfully got through solar conjunction early last month and is back into routine Venus observations. To learn more about the plans for the new Akatsuki mission at Venus, you can read an open-access article recently published in the journal Earth, Planets, and Space: Nakamura et al., "AKATSUKI returns to Venus." The same issue also has an article by Satoh et al. on the IR2 camera, which is studying Venus' middle- to low-altitude atmosphere.

Earth's Neighborhood

This month, new moon is on July 4 and full moon is on July 19. Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is still actively exploring the Moon, having just celebrated its seventh anniversary in orbit. Last month's cool image posts included two geologic maps, highlighting the science that can be derived from the orbiter's lovely photos. One of them is a map of a potential landing site for the Luna-Glob mission, planned for launch in the mid-2020s.

I don't have any updates on ARTEMIS beyond what I wrote in February, or on Chang'e 3 or Chang'e 5 T1 since April. Amateur radio operators who listen for Chang'e 3 signals haven't heard anything from it or Yutu for a while.

Near-Earth Asteroids

Hayabusa2 is now 54 million kilometers from Earth and 77 million kilometers from Ryugu. Today the mission announced a Ryugu observation campaign, inviting really expert amateur observers to attempt to image Ryugu (which will be just 18th magnitude) between now and August 15, the last opportunity to do so before Hayabusa2's arrival. They've also been testing higher-frequency Ka-band communications with the Deep Space Network, in anticipation of using that band to return Ryugu data once the science mission starts. Follow Hayabusa2's journey with this interactive visualization tool, and enjoy this cartoon of Hayabusa2 celebrating its 555th day in space!