European space agencies will evaluate possible role

The medium Earth orbit constellation designed to bring broadband satellite service to the “other 3 billion” (O3b) customers in the developing world is taking shape above the equator with the June 25 launch of the first four spacecraft on an Arianespace Soyuz flying from the Guiana Space Center on the north coast of South America. Another set of four satellites is scheduled for launch later this year, and the third and final group of four is set to go up in the first half of next year.

Shenzhou 10, China’s longest human mission to date, ended safely early Wednesday with a landing on a Mongolian steppe. Touchdown of the mission’s return capsule with its crew of two men and a woman came at 8:07 a.m. local time (8:07 p.m. Tuesday EDT), 15 days after it was launched from the Jiuquan launch site on a Long March 2F rocket.

HOUSTON — Celestis, Inc., the post-cremation memorial spaceflight company, is offering to send a small sample of a loved one’s ashes into deep space in November 2014, accompanying a solar-sail mission flying as a secondary payload to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Deep Space Climate Observatory (Dscovr). Planned for launch from Cape Canaveral aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Dscovr will head for the Earth-Sun L-1 Lagrangian point, where the NOAA spacecraft will serve as a solar weather sentry.

Nauka Multipurpose Laboratory Module in planned for late 2013

Merger leaves company with two entries in NASA competition

A “discussion draft” of a two-year NASA reauthorization bill drew fire in its originating congressional committee June 19, with Democrats complaining about cuts in Earth Science funding, one Republican leader promising to vote again the bill unless funds are added to a project under way in his district, and two witnesses warning that NASA may have to choose between the International Space Station and human exploration beyond low Earth orbit.

HOUSTON - With eight new candidates, NASA intends to sustain the number of U.S. astronauts at 45 to 55 men and women for the foreseeable future, well down from an all-time high of 139 fliers in 2000, when the agency was launching five to six shuttle missions annually and beginning to continuously staff the International Space Station.