Engineering graduate and undergraduate students are displaying heightened interest in space-related studies as entrepreneurial space start-ups get ready to start flying, panelists discussing the role of academia in the burgeoning “New Space” movement said Nov. 15.

Phobos, the small irregularly shaped moon of Mars whose origins remain a mystery, may offer a repository for small amounts of soil and rock originating from the red planet, according to a study by Brown University scientists associated with Russia’s failed 2011 Phobos-Grunt sample return mission.

The U.S. Air Force’s upcoming Operationally Responsive Space-3 (ORS-3) demonstration, poised for launch Nov. 19 from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island, Va., is aimed at demonstrating a bevy of new technologies, as well as “commercial-like” launch processes that could reduce the cost of future national security space missions.

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To protect against a gap in U.S. weather satellite data collection, a team reviewing progress on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s (NOAA) satellite program is recommending the weather monitoring department rapidly purchase additional sensors.

Globalstar, Inc. will market a personal anti-theft device, SPOT Trace, designed for safeguarding vehicles or other valuables using satellite communications and global positioning technologies.

United Launch Alliance is looking to restructure its workforce

The partnership approach NASA used to spur development of two commercial cargo vehicles for International Space Station logistics can hold down the cost of future development, the agency and its commercial partners said in a ceremony marking the official end of the program Nov. 13. But the agency has no solid plans to apply it beyond the commercial crew development effort already underway, and that work is drawing fire.