Gregory Johnson, the newly named president and executive director of the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (Casis), hopes the International Space Station (ISS) can be a proving ground for a new type of commercial spaceflight just getting underway.

A LEGEND PASSES: Mercury astronaut M. Scott Carpenter, the second American to orbit the Earth, died Oct. 10 in Denver of complications following a stroke. He was 88. A naval aviator during the Korean War who went on to become a test pilot, Carpenter conducted some of the first scientific experiments in space and ate some of the first solid food consumed there. His sole spaceflight — three orbits over five hours on May 24, 1962 — ended 250 mi.

L’Garde Inc., prime contractor for NASA’s Sunjammer solar sail mission, has successfully executed a partial ground deployment of the mechanisms that comprise the centerpiece of the deep-space propulsion demonstrator. Sunjammer, a $27 million NASA Science and Technology Mission Directorate initiative, is tentatively scheduled for a January 2015 liftoff as a secondary payload aboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Deep Space Climate Observatory (Discovr) launch.

Engineers at Lockheed Martin and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are downloading data from NASA’s Juno probe after the $1.1 billion spacecraft put itself into safe mode during a close Earth flyby designed to sling it toward Jupiter.

PARIS — Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has announced the appointment of Deputy Defense Minister Oleg Ostapenko to replace Vladimir Popovkin as head of Russian space agency Roscosmos. The Oct. 10 announcement comes as Moscow reviews proposals to centralize oversight of its space industry in an effort to curb government waste and restore confidence in the nation’s space program following a spate of spacecraft and launch vehicle failures in recent years (AWIN First, Oct. 9).

MARS SIM: The Mars Society is looking for six volunteers to participate as members of the crew of the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) during a year-long simulation of a human Mars expedition set to take place in northern Canada starting in August 2014. The crew will conduct a sustained program of field exploration on Devon Island, 900 mi. from the North Pole, while operating under many of the same constraints that will be faced by explorers on an actual human Mars mission, according to the Mars Society.

PARIS — Moscow is reviewing a proposal to centralize its space industry in an effort to curb government waste and restore confidence in Russia’s space program following a spate of launch vehicle failures in recent years. The proposal was unveiled by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin in a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, during which Rogozin said a new state entity will be formed to centralize oversight of Russian production plants, leaving Russian space agency Roscosmos to serve as system integrator and procurement authority.

Furloughs imminent if the U.S. government shutdown continues