HOUSTON — A pair of NASA research aircraft — a P-3B turboprop and B200 King Air — take to the skies over Houston on Sept. 4 for a month-long state and federally sponsored campaign to refine the development of future satellite sensors capable of continuous air quality measurements from geosynchronous orbit.

Two telecom satellites were launched from Guiana Space Center

DRIVER’s SEAT: NASA supporters may not like the limited funding being proposed by the Republicans who control the House, but space fans would be wise to study them, according to an ex-official of the embattled agency. Scott Pace, a former NASA associate administrator, says that by at least marking up their annual spending bill and a new NASA authorization bill within the constraints of spending limits mandated by the 2011 Budget Control Act, House Republicans have put themselves in the driver’s seat.

NEW DELHI — India expects to make another attempt to launch the GSAT-14 communications satellite aboard its Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) in December, a senior space scientist says. Plans to loft GSLV-D5 were scrubbed on Aug. 19 just hours before the scheduled liftoff from the launch pad in south India, due to a fuel leak in the second stage of the rocket engine.

New findings from India’s 2008-09 Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter mission point to an internal source of water on the Moon detected in magmatic deposits at an equatorial crater peak, according to NASA-funded research led by scientists from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).

BEIJING — China’s lunar exploration program will meet its long-standing target to launch the Chang’e 3 sample-return mission this year, but only just, according to a statement from a government authority with oversight of space activities. The mission will go ahead at the end of the year, says the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.

HOUSTON — Japan looks upon a 2014 opportunity to have a national representative command the International Space Station as a chance to demonstrate the country’s growing capabilities in the field of human spaceflight, according to the astronaut who will shoulder the task. “It means a lot to Japan, especially after becoming a reliable partner in the program,” said Koichi Wakata, a veteran Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut, to an Aug. 28 NASA news briefing.

When it came time to make the 2014 budget request, Pentagon planners made large cuts to major U.S. Air Force airlift programs compared to spending estimates in the 2013 budget plan. In the 2014 request, lines for the C-130J, MC-130J, C-17A and C-5 programs were all cut more than 40% when compared to the 2013 plan for the 2014 outyear. However, two modification lines for the C-130 airframe got big increases. (See charts pp. 6-11.)