STENNIS SPACE CENTER, Miss. — Aerojet Rocketdyne expects to begin preparatory work for restarting production of all-new RS-25 engines as early as next month for future use in NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) vehicles in the 2020s.

HOUSTON — The latest suspected source of the worrisome water leak into the helmet of European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano during a July 16 spacewalk is a potentially clogged tube in the suit’s humidity removal system.

PARIS — The European Space Agency (ESA) has completed the flight model of the Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument slated to fly aboard NASA’s next flagship astronomy mission, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Built by EADS Astrium GmbH of Ottobrun, Germany, NIRSpec will be shipped later this month to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., where the 200-kg (440-lb.) spectrograph will undergo additional testing prior to integration with the JWST spacecraft’s payload module.

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LOS ANGELES — Powered flight tests of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2) suborbital spaceplane resumed on Sept. 5 with a supersonic sortie over Mojave, Calif., that included the use of the tail-plane feathering re-entry system.

HOUSTON — Houston is poised to seek a commercial spaceport license from FAA to establish a runway-based complex supporting reusable launch vehicles, spacecraft assembly and flight training, as well as aerospace research and education. The proposed spaceport would occupy 439 acres of Ellington Airport property close to NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

JAXA’s HTV-4 resupply craft departed Sept. 4, clearing a berthing port

Golden Spike, the private U.S. startup established to create a human transportation service to the surface of the Moon, is gaining confidence it can make its business plan work as it wraps up initial engineering studies.