LOGAN, Utah — The global groundswell of cubesat projects promises to generate more data than the ad hoc communications systems originally devised for the tiny spacecraft can handle, and the community is working on how to accommodate the flow. The issue is expected to become more critical as the short-lived cubesats launched by universities, government labs and private companies worldwide give way to swarms of tiny spacecraft carrying cameras, telescopes and other high-data sensors.

LOGAN, Utah - ATK will develop and build the largest composite case solid-fuel rocket motors ever flown for the planned Stratolaunch Systems Air-Launch Vehicle (ALV), which will drop from the largest aircraft ever built to orbit payloads as heavy as 15,000 lb. (Image: Stratolaunch)

HOUSTON — Michael Foale, long NASA’s most senior active astronaut, has retired from the space agency after three decades and a half-dozen spaceflights. One of them—a 145-day flight to Russia’s former Mir space station in 1997—was interrupted by a harrowing collision with an out-of-control Progress cargo capsule. During his 2003-04 command of the eighth expedition to the International Space Station, Foale became the first American to accumulate a year in space on his way to logging a pre-retirement total of 375 days.

FLYING FIRE: NASA plans to fly an experimental fire safety payload aboard Orbital Sciences Corp.’s Cygnus during one of the cargo spacecraft’s planned visits to the International Space Station in mid-2015. Known as the Spacecraft Fire Experiment (Saffire), the effort is aimed at improving spacecraft fire safety for future space exploration vehicles. Built by NASA’s Glenn Research Center, Saffire will test the flammability of large samples of various types of materials in microgravity.

Thales Alenia Space of France and Italy says it will no longer advertise certain variants of its Spacebus 4000 communications satellite as free of components and materials controlled by the U.S. Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).

HOUSTON — International Space Station astronaut Karen Nyberg successfully grappled Japan’s unpiloted H-II transfer vehicle (HTV-4) early Aug. 9 using the orbiting lab’s Canadian robot arm. NASA ground control teams then took over the robotic operations to berth the 33-ft.-long freighter and its 3.6 tons of cargo to the U.S. segment after the initial capture.

Boeing controllers in California are operating the newest Wideband Global Satcom (WGS-6) military communications satellite following its launch on a Delta IV Aug. 7.

A National Research Council panel is calling on policymakers to establish a sustained and enhanced land imaging program to ensure data continuity from the 40-year Landsat effort. Stable follow-on efforts would end a chaotic history of federal oversight of Landsat, while assuring spacecraft continuity, technically advanced sensors and data management, and the widest possible distribution of the imagery, according to the panel’s Aug. 8 report.