BEIJING — Australia will make urgent repairs to its two main amphibious ships with funds left over from an under-budget modification to a fleet tanker. A winning quotation from Singaporean ship builder ST Marine to convert the tanker HMAS Success to a double-hull configuration was less than the funds set aside for the work, releasing money for “priority repair” of HMA Kanimbla and Manoora, two assault ships that have been idle since late September.

Evergreen Aviation Technologies, working at full capacity despite a global downturn in aircraft maintenance, is moving toward a nearly round-the-clock operation of its physically constrained Taipei base.

China will validate a range of technologies with its second lunar probe, including the landing of a camera on the surface of the Moon and control of a spacecraft by X-band communications. The Chang’e 2 probe, built as a back-up for the 2007 spacecraft Chang’e 1 and inserted into the Chinese lunar program because it happened to be available, has already validated the first of six main technologies it was designed to demonstrate—direct injection onto a lunar-transfer path without first settling into an Earth orbit.