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.”

LOSS AT HAL: Baldev Singh, chief test pilot and director of corporate planning and marketing for Indian state-run defense powerhouse Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL), is dead in an apparent suicide. His body was found Oct. 11 hanging from a tree at the tourist spot Nandi Hills near Bengaluru, police say. The precise circumstances of his death are still not known. Singh, 58, was involved with the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) program from 1990 onward and was assigned to the Aeronautical Development Agency for this purpose.

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.