SPACEX LEASE: SpaceX signed a three-year lease for land and facilities at New Mexico’s Spaceport America for flight testing its reusable Grasshopper vertical-takeoff-and-landing rocket. Gov. Susana Martinez announced the agreement Tuesday, noting that the Hawthorne, Calif.-based company wants to expand its test envelope now that it has completed low altitude tests at its facility in McGregor, Texas.

The launch of the European Space Agency (ESA) Proba-V Earth observation satellite atop a Vega light launcher was scrubbed May 3 due to unfavorable weather over the Guiana Space Center, Europe’s equatorial spaceport in French Guiana on the northeast coast of South America. The mission, which was constrained to a 1-sec. launch window at 11:06:31 p.m. local time, is also carrying Vietnam’s VNREDSat-1 Earth observation spacecraft and the ESTCube-1 solar-sail demonstrator for Estonia.

U.S. China-watchers believe the U.S. can expand cooperation with China in space without harming national security, and in fact ease the tense relationship in a manner comparable to the approach President Richard Nixon used in the run-up to the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975.

Mockup of capsule descended safely with multiple induced failures

NEW DELHI — India’s space agency has plans to start a new facility for production of cryogenic engines and components for its future rockets. The cryogenic engine manufacturing unit, to be established at the aerospace division of the state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) in Bengaluru three years from now, is estimated to cost around $25 million (1.4 billion rupees), Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) chief K. Radhakrishnan says.

SPACESUIT AWARD: NASA will spend an estimated $4.38 million with ILC Dover on the design, manufacture and test of a next-generation spacesuit, under a contract announced April 25. Designed to improve astronaut capability during extravehicular activities, the Z-2 suit will operate at higher pressure than previous models, to improve productivity. It will also be designed to work with existing airlocks and new designs in development at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Used Canadian robot arm to demonstrate series of capabilities

In a bustling factory in Mississippi, shiny blue cradles holding new aircraft radars line up for shipment like jets on a flight line, ready for takeoff