Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), currently the longest-serving woman in Congress, will now become the first woman to lead one of what is perhaps its most powerful panels, the Senate Appropriations Committee. Mikulski takes control of the committee after the recent death of Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), who had chaired the full committee since 2009 and led Democrats on the defense subcommittee since 1989. And she will serve alongside Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.), who will lead Republicans on the panel.

Teeing up an issue for Congress in 2013, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), have introduced a bill that would push the FAA to begin setting privacy rules for the use of UAVs in civilian airspace. UAVs can carry “infrared thermal imagers, radar and wireless network 'sniffers,' with the capability to collect sensitive detailed information while operating in the skies above,” according to Markey. As such, he is seeking to regulate their use.

Senior NASA managers and their White House overseers are pondering whether it might be politically possible to mount a near-term mission to capture a small asteroid and reposition it in orbit around the Moon, where it could serve as a proving ground for hardware and crews en route to larger objects deeper into space.

In 2004, the Joint Strike Fighter's program manager, Lockheed Martin Vice President Tom Burbage, observed that if any one big defense program falters, the rippling effects impact all programs.

After 14 years of trying, North Korea has finally joined the countries capable of launching a satellite into orbit. But the success was short-lived. The nation's space program is also experiencing the bitterness of the failure to keep its spacecraft stable. North Korea succeeded Dec. 11 on its six attempt to orbit what officials there call an Earth-observation satellite. The U.S. led a group of nations, including Russia and China, that warned North Korea not to proceed with the mission. China has since expressed “regret” over it.

A small engineering firm on Florida's Space Coast is looking to recover some of the revenue and jobs the region lost with retirement of the space shuttle fleet by offering maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services to the commercial spaceflight industry that the Obama administration hopes will take the shuttle's place.

Thales Alenia Space and Gazprom Space Systems are confident that efforts to recover Russia's Yamal 402 Ku-band commercial telecom satellite will succeed, but it remains unclear how much of the spacecraft's 15-year service life will be lost. A premature shutdown of the Briz M upper stage on its International Launch Services (ILS) launch vehicle Dec. 9 left Yamal 402 in the wrong orbit, and controllers are using its onboard station-keeping/attitude control propellant to adjust it.

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