HOUSTON — NASA’s chief scientist Ellen Stofan is among those pleased with the $17.6 billion top line for the agency included in the $1.1 trillion 2014 Omnibus appropriations bill making its way through Congress this week. The compromise spending plan that lifts NASA away from the 2013 sequester budget cuts includes $5.15 billion for science programs, or $133.4 million more than proposed by the White House for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

Top NASA officials took advantage of the recent gathering of space agency chiefs in Washington to look for ways to broaden cooperation with China, including rare direct talks with Chinese space leaders.

EUTELSAT 9B: International Launch Services (ILS) will launch Eutelsat 9B for Eutelsat Communications in 2015 on a Proton rocket, the Reston, Va., company said Jan. 15. Space Systems of Airbus Defense and Space will build the 5,300-kg (11,700-lb.) Ku-band satellite, which will be positioned at 9 deg. E. Long. to deliver service via 66 transponders.

NEW DELHI — India hopes to launch Chandrayaan-2, its second lunar exploration mission, with an indigenous rover and lander, aboard a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) by 2017. The mission will be a totally Indian program, without any participation from frequent industrial partner Russia. “This time it will be an indigenous launch ... which intends to demonstrate our capability to soft-land on the lunar surface,” says K. Radhakrishnan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).

Controllers at the European Space Agency’s facility in Darmstadt, Germany, nudged the $1.3 billion Gaia spacecraft into its operational orbit at the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrangian point on Jan. 14, setting the mission up to produce a 3D star map of the galaxy with unprecedented precision. The final trajectory adjustment required only a brief burn of the spacecraft’s thrusters, following an almost 2-hr. firing last week to set up the orbit around the imaginary point 1.5 million km from Earth on the side opposite the Sun.

NOAA BOOST: The fiscal 2014 omnibus appropriations bill being considered this week in Congress would, if enacted, provide the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration with $1.89 billion for continued development of its satellite systems, $207 million more than last fiscal year.

Funding for U.S. civil space and aeronautics work would bounce back by almost $800 million above the levels set by sequestration in 2013 under the omnibus appropriations bill working its way through Congress via a bipartisan budget agreement, allowing NASA to maintain its ongoing activities without an apparent need for major changes.

NASA PROTEST: Wyle Laboratories has prevailed in a bid dispute with Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) over a potential $1.76 billion NASA award for medical, biomedical and health services supporting human spaceflight programs. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) sustained, or supported, Wyle’s protest in a Dec. 27, 2013, decision, published Jan. 13. Since NASA announced the contract opportunity in July 2012, SAIC split into two companies — one retaining the SAIC name and another called Leidos.