MUNICH — EADS Astrium has signed an agreement with Inmarsat to resell commercial and military broadband capacity on the London-based fleet operator’s new constellation of all-Ka-band Global Xpress satellites, giving them privileged access to the globally available mobile broadband network.

LOS ANGELES — Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic are poised to push the SpaceShipTwo (SS2) suborbital vehicle to new heights and speeds during the third, and longest yet, powered flight test, which is planned for the coming days. The flight, from Scaled Composites’ Mojave, Calif., base, will be the most ambitious to date and is scheduled to include the first attempt at a supersonic re-entry using the vehicle’s tail-plane feathering braking system.

After sending the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite to orbit atop a Soyuz rocket from the Guiana Space Center (CSG) Dec. 19, European launch services provider Arianespace confirmed the dates of its first two Ariane 5 launches in 2014.

BEIJING — Chinese development engineers encountered great challenges in developing the main engine for Chang’e 3 lunar probe, says the chief designer for the propulsion program, Jin Guangming.

HOUSTON — U.S. astronauts aboard the International Space Station area readying their NASA spacesuits, including the protective garment that leaked water into a helmet during a July 16 excursion, for a series of spacewalks intended to repair a crippled external cooling system.

BEIJING — China’s Chang’e 3 lunar probe, despite encountering unexpectedly extreme temperature disparities on the Moon’s surface, has six of its eight scientific instruments activated and operating properly. Optical and ultraviolet imaging experiments have begun, but as of Dec. 17 controllers had not yet activated an alpha particle X-ray spectrometer and an imaging spectrometer operating in the visible and near-infrared wavelengths. The probe arrived on the Moon on Dec. 14 GMT.

Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) has completed all its milestones under NASA’s Commercial Crew Development 2 (CCDev2) program, which culminated in the first free-flight test and runway landing of its Dream Chaser spacecraft. Other milestones in the development of the reusable, lifting-body human spacecraft included a systems requirement review, flight simulator development, the creation of a vehicle avionics integration laboratory, a system definition review, a flight control integration laboratory and a preliminary design review, the company said Dec. 16.

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