A concept for constructing satellites from building-block “satlets,” under development for the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), could allow a spacecraft to be assembled quickly around the payload for a specific mission or service, says developer NovaWurks. Instead of integrating the payload into a large satellite bus that provides the required mechanical, propulsion, power, thermal, communications, processing and other functions, the spacecraft would be assembled around the payload by connecting multiple satlets together.

A powerful solar flare forced Orbital Sciences Corp. to delay the first commercial mission of its Cygnus cargo vehicle atop the company’s new Antares rocket Wednesday, delaying delivery of 1,465 kg. of supplies and scientific gear to the International Space Station by at least a day. Company engineers scrubbed the planned attempt after determining that radiation levels “exceeded by a considerable margin the constraints imposed on the mission to ensure the rocket’s electronic systems are not impacted by a harsh radiation environment.”

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Congressional auditors agree that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), one of the agency’s most complex and costly science projects, is proceeding well along its restructured plan, but the Hubble successor has little fiscal room for error or surprise difficulties leading up to its expected October 2018 launch.

NASA will get four more years to operate the International Space Station under a White House decision announced Jan. 8.

DREAM CHASER: Sierra Nevada Corp. has made agreements with the European Space Agency and the German Aerospace Center to explore potential applications of European technology to the company’s Dream Chaser reusable human spacecraft. “This international collaboration will also help define missions outside the Dream Chaser’s primary mission of ferrying U.S. and partner nation astronauts to low Earth orbit, thereby helping to maintain the global space partnerships established between these agencies and the United States space program,” the company said Jan. 8.

NASA skirted internal processes and cost-saving agreements established with the Department of Defense when it chose to refurbish the B-2 test stand at the agency’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi for testing of the Space Launch System (SLS) core stage, according to agency Inspector General Paul K. Martin. The SLS core stage is the foundation for the new upgradable heavy-lift rocket envisioned to send U.S. astronauts on future missions of deep space exploration.

SpaceX launched its second commercial communications satellite — Thaicom 6 — with an upgraded Falcon 9 on Jan. 6. But the company fell silent immediately after the Orbital Sciences Corp. spacecraft was to have deployed, raising the possibility that the new rocket’s troublesome upper stage failed to perform as advertised.