NEW DELHI — India has successfully launched a new satellite, Megha-Tropiques, to study climatic and atmospheric changes in tropical regions. Produced jointly by India and France, the one-ton satellite was one of four spacecraft placed into orbit on Oct. 12 by the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) from the launch pad near Sriharikota at the Satish Dhawan Space Center in southern India. The PSLV stood 44 meters (145 ft.) tall and weighed 230 tons at launch.

NEW DELHI — Still recovering from repeated failures of its heavy-lift Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) in 2010, the Indian Space Research Organization is eyeing the next flight of the vehicle in 2012. “We have a major task ahead of us ... [the] development and perfection of [the] indigenous cryogenic stage,” ISRO Chairman K. Radhakrishnan says. “We are making good progress and we plan to have the next flight of GSLV ... in the second quarter of 2012.”

Virgin Atlantic and a New Zealand company, LanzaTech, plan to develop and produce a low-carbon aviation fuel made from the waste gases of industrial steel production. Boeing and Stockholm-based Swedish Biofuels AB are among the other partners in the project, and a demonstration flight using the fuel is planned in the next 12-18 months.