AIR LAUNCH: A Payerne, Switzerland-based startup has joined with France’s Dassault, the European Space Agency and others to propose an air-launched, reusable, unpiloted space shuttle optimized for launching small satellites at low cost. Swiss Space Systems plans to use a vehicle based on Dassault Aviation’s Vehra airborne reusable hypersonic vehicle concept, and a throwaway upper stage, to orbit satellites weighing as much as 250 kg at altitudes of 600-800 km.

'Career civil servants' report lax security practices at NASA

Examined spacecraft reusability and on-orbit assembly options

BEIJING — Development of two major derivatives of the DFH-4 satellite bus of Chinese spacecraft builder CAST is running ahead of work on the state manufacturer’s larger DFH-5 product, says a sibling marketing company.

BERLIN — Researchers at more than half a dozen European space institutes are working to build better tools to forecast the space weather patterns produced by the Earth’s Sun. Space weather events such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) create streams of energetic particles that can adversely affect astronaut health, satellite operations and terrestrial power grids.

LOS ANGELES — Virgin Galactic says a series of final confirmation hot-fire tests of SpaceShipTwo’s RM2 hybrid rocket are under way at Mojave, Calif., in preparation for the start of powered test flights of its suborbital passenger vehicle.

Vertical takeoff and landing test vehicle reached almost 263 ft.

Says contractors who employ foreign workers must comply with laws