NASA’s Kepler planet-finder has started an extended mission that could last as long as four more years, after finding more than 2,300 candidate extra-solar planets in its 3.5-year primary mission by measuring the faint flickers of distant stars. The candidate list, which must be confirmed by Earth-based observations, includes “hundreds” of planets that are roughly the same size as Earth. A prime objective of the extended mission will be to find a true Earth analog in terms of size, star type and orbit.
The U.S. and Australian militaries have agreed to place two key U.S. space systems in Australia. A U.S. Air Force C-band space-surveillance radar – which can track up to 200 objects a day and can help identify satellites, their orbits and potential anomalies – will move from Antigua to Western Australia in 2014 and will increase coverage of space objects in the Southern Hemisphere, the Pentagon says. It will be the first low Earth orbit space surveillance network sensor in that hemisphere and will help track “high-interest” launches from Asia.
NASA and the European Space Agency have demonstrated the use of an experimental interplanetary internet to communicate with a small rover based in Germany, with commands issued by a U.S. astronaut aboard the International Space Station.
PARIS — Despite budget pressures at home, the U.K. plans to invest £1.2 billion ($1.9 billion) in European Space Agency (ESA) programs during the next five years, a 25% increase over current spending aimed at attracting more high-tech jobs and strengthening the U.K.’s position as a global player in satellite and telecommunications technology development.
GREENBELT, Md. — The U.S.-Japanese Global Precipitation Measurement Mission (GPM), a complex environmental-monitoring spacecraft with the potential to improve forecasting of the trajectory and strength of hurricanes, is set to enter the thermal vacuum chamber at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center this week as it moves toward launch as early as February 2014.
Loral Space & Communications Inc. is cooperating with its principal Canadian ownership partner in Ottawa-based Telesat for a potential initial public offering, Loral CEO and President Michael Targoff told a Nov. 9 shareholders teleconference.
The coming decade should bring strong growth to the global satellite production and launch industry, according to the Paris-based consulting company Euroconsult, which forecasts $198 billion in revenues for the 2012-2021 period, a 36% increase over the previous 10 years. Demand from established government space programs, as well as a commercial sector faced with replacing aging telecommunications spacecraft, will drive the anticipated demand despite global economic concerns.
PARIS — Members of the French parliament say Europe’s Arianespace launch consortium is ill-prepared to lose any commercial Ariane 5 business to competitors in Russia, China, India or the U.S., where startup Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) is making a splash with its low-cost Falcon 9 rocket.
Boeing Defense, Space and Security is restructuring its business units once again, undoing some of the changes it enacted only two years ago in an effort to reap savings that it can pass on to more frugal defense customers worldwide.
Researchers in three projects will split grants from the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (Casis) totaling $1.2 million to take advantage of the microgravity environment on the International Space Station for pharmaceutical research. Casis, set up to run the public portion of the U.S. National Laboratory on the ISS, awarded its first research grants to scientists at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, California Institute of Technology and iXpressGenes Inc.
NASA’s Glenn Research Center is looking for large fairings and adapters for the agency’s heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS). In a request for information published Nov. 1, the Cleveland-based field center asks industry to suggest options for fairings and payload adapters that can expand the big rocket’s ability to carry cargo and spacecraft to orbit.
Controllers are checking out two large spacecraft built by Russia’s ISS-Reshetnev after their successful tandem launch on a Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome Nov. 2. Separating from the Proton’s Breeze-M upper stage were the Yamal 300K telecommunications bird, and a space station relay satellite designated Luch 5B.
An Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares rocket first stage apparently will be able to undergo a hot-fire test later this month on its seaside launch pad, despite the high winds and water that blasted NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia during Hurricane Sandy. A company spokesman said Nov. 2 that work crews were able to reach access hatches and environmental-data recorders on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 to complete their initial inspection of the kerosene-fueled rocket stage. “Everything apparently looks good,” he said. Dress Rehearsal
