HOUSTON — The first of Planet Labs’ 28-strong fleet of Earth observing CubeSats leaped into orbit from the International Space Station’s spring-loaded deployer mechanism early Feb. 11. The first four of the San Francisco-based Planet Labs’ Dove Sats emerged from the launcher outside the orbiting science laboratory’s Japanese Kibo module in pairs at 3:32 a.m. and 7:41 a.m. EST.

NASA and French space agency CNES have formalized a cooperative agreement on the primary instrument that will fly aboard the U.S.-led InSight mission to Mars. As NASA’s 12th Discovery mission, the $425 million InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) aims to land a sophisticated geophysical observatory on the surface of Mars to study its structure and composition.

U.S. commercial remote sensing services provider Skybox Imaging has awarded Space Systems/Loral (SSL) of Palo Alto, Calif., a contract to build an advanced constellation of small Earth observation satellites for operation in low Earth orbit.

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PARIS — A combination of new competition from U.S.-based Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and an unfavorable euro-dollar exchange rate means European governments may need to increase subsidies for operations of the Ariane 5 heavy-lift launch vehicle at Europe’s Guiana Space Center (CSG) in Kourou, French Guiana.

NASA I.T.: NASA’s Inspector General (IG) is faulting a $2.5 billion, four-year agency effort with HP Enterprise Services to transition computer support from a field center-based framework to organization-wide oversight. Now at its mid-point, the effort has led to difficulties with IT security and timely software patches, according to a recent audit. NASA IG Paul Martin urges careful consideration by NASA before exercising a three-year extension of the November 2011 HP contract.

U.S. AIR FORCE

Astronomers and engineers are looking to September for a flight demonstration of NASA hardware that could deliver “arc second” precision pointing and stability suitable for planetary observations using instrumentation suspended from high-altitude balloons.