Power-saving integrated circuits that extend battery life in portable electronics, and are being applied to military radios and investigated for avionics, are the overall winner of Aviation Week's 2012 Innovation Challenge, organized to bring new technologies and processes to the attention of aerospace and defense leaders.

In the uncertain funded world of human spaceflight, the habit of die-hard propulsion engineers to never throw anything away is becoming increasingly useful as NASA looks for crew transports.

The world has changed in the slightly more than three years since the Kepler planet-finding spacecraft was launched into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit on a Delta II rocket. For starters, the Earth has 61 new cousins scattered around the universe, and another 2,321 new candidate-planets awaiting confirmation by astronomers as the real things.

In 1989, when Paul Graziani and two friends dreamed up what has become Analytical Graphics Inc., they sat in his living room envisioning a work environment where people could do their best work, creating new and bold things at a speed that would keep them happy and challenged. They would create commercial off-the-shelf analysis software for the security and space sectors, driving down cost while bringing the power of current and dynamic software to a non-consumer market.

Some astronauts who have spent extended periods in microgravity on the International Space Station (ISS) have developed abnormalities in their eyes and pituitary gland/brain connectors that are similar to a type of intracranial hypertension that occurs on the ground. The finding may help Earth-bound physicians understand what causes the potentially serious condition, but it already has NASA flight surgeons pondering how they can mitigate it when astronauts travel into deep space.

The space shuttle Discovery passes its sister ship Atlantis (see photo) March 9 as Kennedy Space Center prepares the retired orbiter fleet for transport to their new museum homes. Discovery is scheduled to arrive at the National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center at Washington Dulles International Airport on April 19. It will replace the Enterprise atmospheric test article now on display inside the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar.