PARIS — NASA will seek a supplemental role aboard the European Space Agency’s (ESA) next two large astrophysics missions, including a new-generation X-ray telescope and a gravitational wave observatory.

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The U.S.-led search for the existence of extraterrestrial life has reached a threshold, primarily through the discovery of alien planets made by NASA’s Kepler space telescope, making it theoretically possible that the biosignatures of gases produced by microbial life on planets circling nearby stars could be detected within a decade, experts told the House Science, Space and Technology Committee in a Dec. 4 hearing.

NASA’s Technology Capabilities Assessment Team is finding new acceptance of the agency’s need to improve efficiency by eliminating duplication across its scattered field centers, with some center directors actually willing to give up assets if they can use the savings to fund their core competencies.

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Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) launched its first Falcon 9 v1.1 mission to geosynchronous transfer orbit Dec. 3, marking the Hawthorne, Calif.-based startup’s entry into the commercial launch market and positioning it to unseat United Launch Alliance (ULA), the Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture that launches most NASA, U.S. Air Force and intelligence community missions.

Comet Ison, once hailed as a potential “comet of the century” for amateur sky watchers, faded dramatically after executing a Nov. 28 hairpin turn that took it through the Sun’s million-degree corona, leaving little optimism that any significant remnant will be visible to the naked eye late this week in the skies of the Northern Hemisphere.

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