Early image of Ultima Thule revealed, providing hints on its shape

Two NASA astronauts will take part in the first all-female spacewalk this week, a critical outing to restore lost power in the wake of an equipment failure that cropped up after new batteries were installed in the International Space Station’s solar power system during two earlier spacewalks.

Ground controllers have beamed the final commands to NASA’s Kepler telescope, turning off the spacecraft’s transmitters and disabling the craft’s automatic recovery software after the planet-hunting observatory ran out of fuel last month.

Fully recovered from a computer hiccup that disrupted science observations this weekend, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will resume imaging of Pluto on Tuesday, a week before the plutonium-powered probe zooms less than 7,800 miles from the unexplored dwarf planet at the frontier of the solar system.