The first United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV in the Medium-plus 5.2 configuration lifts off surfside at Vandenberg AFB, Calif., at 7:12 p.m. EDT April 3 with a classified National Reconnaissance Office payload. The launch clears the way for three more intelligence satellite launches by the end of the summer for the the joint Defense Department/Intelligence Community agency.

Steve Squyres knows a thing or two about exploration, and he has a great soapbox for passing on his experience where it might do some good. A Cornell University astronomy professor, Squyres is principal investigator on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission. He is also chairman of the NASA Advisory Council—a distinguished group of outside experts who do their best to guide NASA's political leadership in its decisionmaking.

Lopez-Alegria says new space companies can revive U.S. human spaceflight quickly and safely.

It it the most sophisticated piece of space hardware Europe has ever launched, a massive cargo vessel capable of docking automatically at the International Space Station with a precision of better than 6 cm (2.4 in.) and boosting the station to a higher orbit. But with three of the Automated Transfer Vehicle's (ATV) five missions now behind it, the European Space Agency (ESA) is looking for an opportunity to advance its already cutting-edge platform—along with a means to pay for it.

In 1981, during the space shuttle's maiden voyage, co-pilot Robert Crippen proclaimed, “We are really in the space business to stay.” Last week, another veteran astronaut, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, made a similar pronouncement, but under quite different circumstances.

Craters are ubiquitous in the inner Solar System. They exist on Earth, where they are obscured by erosion, and on the rocky (and icy) moons of the outer planets. Some are ancient—products of the period of “heavy bombardment” 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago, when the planetary disk of debris around the Sun was coalescing into the bodies we see today. Others are newer, created by the random but inevitable collisions that occur when there is so much material hurtling around in space.

Aviation Week Senior Editor for Space Frank Morring, Jr., received the National Space Club's 2011 Press Award on March 30 in Washington. The club, a non-profit organization devoted to promoting U.S. space activity and interests, gave the award to Morring at its annual Robert H. Goddard Memorial Dinner.

Australian forces deployed in Afghanistan will have improved tactical UHF satellite links starting in May, when the Intelsat 22 commercial communications satellite reaches its operational orbit at 72 deg. E. Long.