Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) on Dec. 2 again postponed the first launch of its Falcon 9 v1.1 to geosynchronous transfer orbit from Cape Canaveral to allow for more time to double-check various fixes following the mission’s aborted Nov. 28 attempt. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on Twitter that the 24-hr. delay to Dec. 3 will be spent “rechecking to be sure.” The launch window opens at 5:41 p.m. EST.

Comet Ison is providing the world’s astronomers and planetary scientists with a scientific bonanza as it makes a much-anticipated sweep around the Sun on Nov. 28, which is Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. Whether it provides as much of a spectacle for backyard stargazers in the Northern Hemisphere remains a mystery.

NASA’s Ames Research Center and Ball Aerospace think they have found a way to resume the Kepler Space telescope’s search for Earth-like exo-planets. In May, the spacecraft lost the ability to point precisely in the direction of the new worlds it is trying to locate when the second of four of its reaction wheels failed.

HOUSTON — NASA and startup Planetary Resources, Inc. have formed the first public/private partnership under the space agency’s Asteroid Grand Challenge (AGC) initiative to accelerate the search for near-Earth objects (NEOs) that pose a collision threat by using government sky surveys and crowdsourced algorithms. The Solar System’s population of known asteroids is 620,000, but that is estimated to be less than 1% of the actual total.

NASA has engaged in “a number of questionable practices” in the organization’s long-running use of award fees to motivate its contractor ranks to improve the quality of their performance, according to the agency’s inspector general.

Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has postponed the Falcon 9 v1.1’s first mission to geostationary transfer orbit until Nov. 28, as mission managers sort out a liquid-oxygen pressurization issue on the rocket’s first stage. The planned Nov. 25 mission was to carry the Orbital Sciences Corp.-built SES-8 satellite to a supersynchronous transfer orbit of 295 km x 80,000 km altitude and an inclination of 20.75 deg. for Luxembourg-based SES, the world’s second-largest commercial fleet operator by revenue.

HOUSTON — NASA’s recently concluded Asteroid Initiative Idea Synthesis workshop is providing the agency’s Asteroid Retrieval Mission (ARM) planners with new momentum for the agency’s two-phase strategy to resume U.S. human deep-space exploration while demonstrating capabilities to find and deflect asteroids that pose an impact threat.

NEW DELHI — India’s Mars probe, currently orbiting Earth before it embarks on a nine-month journey to the red planet, has activated its Mars Color Camera (MCC) and sent back its first images. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has shared a single image of India and the surrounding region taken on Nov. 19 at 13:50 (IST) at a resolution of 3.53 km from an altitude of 67,975 km. The photo clearly shows India, the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, the Himalayas and the Indo-Gangetic plain.