NASA has selected the astronauts to join two missions scheduled for 2017 that will head to the orbiting laboratory in the International Space Station.

NASA said Friday U.S. Navy Capt. Scott Tingle will participate in his first space flight for the Expedition 53 to launch in September 2017 with fellow U.S. astronaut Jack Fischer; Russia’s Ivan Vagner, Alexander Skvortsov, Fyodor Yurchikhin; and the European Space Agency’s Paolo Nespoli.

“There’s so much going on aboard the space station at this point, so many science experiments and technology demonstrations,” said Chris Cassidy, chief of the astronaut office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

Also selected for a trip to the ISS is retired U.S. Marine Corps Col. Randy Bresnik and he will join Tingle, Vagner and Skvortsov on the station for Expedition 54 in November 2017 along with Russia’s Sergey Ryazansky and Japan’s Norishige Kanai.

U.S. Naval Research Laboratory scientists have assessed ice thickness, strength and other parameters in Alaska’s North Slope in order to determine the evolution and physical structure of ice in the Arctic Ocean as part of the Navy’s five-week research effort.

The team of scientists performed the study on an ice floe in the Beaufort Sea in March as part of the service branch’s ICe Exercise designed to assess how naval and commercial assets can operate in the Arctic, NRL said Thursday.

The military branch’s Arctic Submarine Laboratory identified the ice floe to establish ICEX’s temporary camp through satellite imagery data provided by the National Ice Center.

“Until now, characterization of sea-ice has been primarily at very small, local scales from in-situ core measurements and some ground-based scatterometry,” said Joan Gardner, geologist at NRL.

“Our proposal executes a combined program of airborne measurements and coincident on-ice measurements used to characterize surface and volumetric scattering from the bottom of the sea-ice to the top of the snow surface.”

Researchers used a snow radar, synthetic aperture radar and a Light Detection and Ranging system as tools to collect aerial data for the study.

The White House has published a report that describes how organizations should use big data and algorithmic systems to detect human bias and avoid discrimination.

According to a White House blog entry posted Wednesday, the report also seeks to illustrate how the use of big data to expand opportunity may also introduce inadvertent bias through case studies on credit lending, higher education, criminal justice and employment.

Cecilia Munoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, produced the report with U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith and Chief Data Scientist DJ Patil.

“The purpose of the report is not to offer remedies to the issues it raises, but rather to identify these issues and prompt conversation, research — and action — among technologists, academics, policy makers and citizens,” Munoz, Smith and Patil noted.

They recommend that government agencies and companies invest in research, technical leadership, cross-training and literacy programs that will focus on addressing data discrimination and accountability issues.

Munoz, Smith and Patil also urged computer and data science professionals to help promote ethical use of data to foster equal opportunity and fairness.

U.S. Army Research Laboratory scientists have manufactured a new material for propulsion and lethality applications in an effort to help address the impacts of bullet and shrapnel on humans.

Jesse Sabatini, team leader of the energetics synthesis team within ARL’s weapons and materials research directorate, collaborated with Leah Wingard, Eric Johnson and Pablo Guzman to synthesize the bis-isoxazole tetranitrate material, the Army said Tuesday.

“BITN has a strong potential for improving insensitive munitions characteristics for gun and rocket propellants” said Sabatini.

Sabatini explained that insensitive munitions explode as intended to destroy targets while enduring mechanical shocks, fire and shrapnel impact due to its stable chemical nature.

Army scientists are working to create derivatives of BITN in order to develop denser, higher-performing energetic materials for propellants and explosives.

“In assessing whether BITN and its derivatives are suitable targets to be synthesized, we have been consulting with colleagues at the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama,” Sabatini said.

NASA has scheduled the launch of two new sounding-rocket missions to take place in 2018 as the space agency aims to explore coronal nanoflares and escaping atoms.

The Heliophysics Technology and Instrument Development for Science program funds the Focusing Optics X-ray Imager-3 and Visualizing Ion Outflow via Neutral Atom Sensing-2 projects that will employ updated measurement techniques and instruments to conduct its respective investigations, NASA said Thursday.

Lindsay Glesener of the University of Minnesota will lead the FOXSI-3 program that will look to observe faint events on the sun and search for tiny releases of energy called nanoflares via updated optics and detectors.

“Since nanoflares theoretically convert magnetic energy into kinetic and thermal energies, they are an obvious candidate for supplying the needed energy to heat the million-degree corona,” said Steven Christe, FOXSI-3 co-investigator.

VISIONS-2’s goal is to investigate the outflow of oxygen ions from the Earth’s upper atmosphere and into the magnetosphere, observe movement during the day from the planet’s magnetic cusps and gain knowledge to help understand physics that influence its magnetosphere.