KOUROU, French Guiana — The European Space Agency’s (ESA) fourth Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV-4) launched atop an Ariane 5 ES heavy-lift rocket from the Guiana Space Center here June 5, sending more than 20,000 kg (44,000 lb.) of cargo and fuel to resupply the International Space Station (ISS).

MOONWARD: The Republican chairman of the House Space subcommittee is doubling down on his preference for NASA to prioritize returning astronauts to the Moon, even as the embattled agency continues promoting its asteroid-capture plans. Rep. Steven Palazzo (Miss.) told the ABA Forum on Air and Space Law in Washington June 6 that while the ultimate goal is landing humans on Mars, returning to the Moon is the logical next step. Why? “We have other countries that are aggressively pursuing space exploration programs, and the Moon is one of their specific destinations,” he says.

Kicked off four-year study of problems that surfaced among crew

An Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL air-launched rocket is in final preparation to send a NASA scientific satellite into polar orbit to study a poorly understood region of the Sun’s atmosphere in unprecedented detail. The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (Iris) will combine an ultraviolet telescope and a multi-channel imaging spectrograph to study the interface region between the visible surface of the Sun and its upper atmosphere, which is the source of most of the Sun’s UV radiation.

KOUROU, French Guiana — French space agency CNES and the European Space Agency (ESA) are evaluating near-term options for boosting the payload capacity of the Ariane 5 ECA through hardware improvements that officials say could quickly enhance the launch vehicle’s performance ahead of a planned midlife upgrade already underway.

International Launch Services (ILS) successfully placed the SES-6 satellite into a super-synchronous transfer orbit (SSTO) atop a Russian Proton launch vehicle June 3. The Proton lifted off from Pad 39 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan carrying the Astrium-bult SES-6, which weighed over 6 metric tons at liftoff. After a 15-hr., 31-min. mission, the satellite was placed into the target orbit by the Proton launcher. The launch marks the Reston, Va.-based company’s second SSTO mission with the Proton vehicle.

SATS BANKROLLED: The Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank) has authorized a $343.3 million direct loan to Asia Satellite Telecommunications Co. Ltd. (AsiaSat) to finance the purchase of two Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) communications satellites, plus launch services. SS/L is building AsiaSat 6, a C-band satellite, and AsiaSat 8, a mixed Ku/Ka-band satellite, under a contract announced in November 2011. The launches, to be carried out by SpaceX, are planned for the first half of 2014.

Boeing’s seven-person CST-100 spacecraft has completed integrated wind-tunnel testing of scaled versions of the capsule and United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V launch vehicle as well as oxygen flow assessments for the two-engine Centaur upper stage.