Singapore's Tiger Airways will establish a franchisee airline with the South Korean city Incheon, extending its no-frills brand into north Asia. The latest expansion move by Singapore Airlines budget affiliate will create perhaps the most widely spread narrowbody operation in the world as it and three other Asia/Pacific budget carriers vie to establish their brands across the region.

China’s Long March 5 heavy rocket program, comparable to the U.S. Delta IV, will comprise a family of launchers to be built at a plant at Tianjin whose construction began this week. The rockets will go into service in 2013 at the new Wenchang launch base on Hainan Island. Wenchang itself is to be ready by 2012. The diameter of Long March 5 will be 5 meters (16 ft., 5 in.), up from the 3.35 meters of the current Long March 3.

China will need to overcome a shortage of technical staff as it develops technologies for its second lunar probe, officials say, even as their first such spacecraft executes with clockwork precision the maneuvers that will take it to the Moon. Amid a blaze of publicity that has captivated China’s population with space exploration, the country’s space engineers are giving unusually frank details about their plans and problems.