Odds of losing climate satellite ran as high as 50%.

NASA will spend the next 16 months nailing down exactly how its three commercial crew contractors plan to meet the agency's detailed requirements for flying astronauts to the International Space Station and bringing them back to Earth in one piece. The agency will spend almost $30 million with the three companies—Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corp. and SpaceX—on the first phase of the “certification products contracts” (CPC) that will bring the vehicle designs they are developing into line with NASA's formal safety requirements.

A probe into an upper-stage low-thrust anomaly during an October GPS launch has verified that a leak occurred in the RL10B-2 engine. But, a root cause continues to elude investigators, and satellite owners are proceeding with Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) missions only if they are willing to accept any extra risk resulting from the unknowns surrounding the incident.

A new, satellite-based, 8-hr. weather forecast prototype covering remote areas of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans is available to industry as a research tool on the website for the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

They could not have timed it better: One day after France launched its second high-resolution Pleiades satellite, shareholders of U.S. commercial imagery provider GeoEye approved a buyout by the company's chief U.S. competitor that will leave Longmont, Colo.-based DigitalGlobe operating the largest fleet of high-resolution optical Earth-imaging satellites.

As Hurricane Sandy wound its way north along the Atlantic Coast in late October, the storm appeared to be on a track to head harmlessly out to sea. But data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) polar orbiting weather satellites indicated that the deadly storm would take a sharp left turn and hit some of the most densely populated regions of the U.S., providing days of warning.

SpaceX bests Orbital, eyes duel with ULA for Air Force contracts

Curiosity 2.0 will gather samples for eventual return to Earth.