PARIS — European launch services provider Arianespace says it generated sales of €1.3 billion ($1.7 billion) spread across 10 launches in 2012, a 30% increase over 2011 and a record that will see the company break even for the year, with the help of annual price supports financed by the European Space Agency (ESA) to keep the commercial launch consortium from operating at a loss.

BEIJING — China has declared its Beidou satellite navigation system fully operational, although the service remains limited to most of the Asia-Pacific region. The operating office says it is “accelerating” construction of the system, but repeats its longstanding commitment to achieve global coverage by about 2020; no earlier possibility is mentioned.

Final prelaunch tests will begin Jan. 11 for NASA’s Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) mission now that Lockheed Martin Space Systems has completed integrating the science instruments with the spacecraft at its Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto, Calif.

Review of three human exploration elements kicks off next week

HOUSTON — U.S. and Russian medical experts will draw from seven broad areas as they establish a research agenda in early 2013 for a one-year mission aboard the International Space Station flown by NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko, test cosmonaut from RSC Energia. The ISS veterans were selected in late November by the U.S. and Russian space agencies to train for the long flight expected to launch in March 2015 and potentially reveal health or performance concerns for future human deep space exploration.

planet candidates: NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has discovered 461 new planet candidates, NASA announced Jan. 7. Four are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit in their respective stars’ “habitable zone” in which liquid water can exist on the surface, the agency says. The observations, gathered from May 2009 to March 2011, “show a steady increase in the number of smaller-size planet candidates and the number of stars with more than one candidate,” NASA says.

A new “block buy” deal for the U.S. Air Force to buy the next two satellites designed by Lockheed Martin to provide nuclear-hardened communications for the president and military commanders is estimated to save the government almost $1.5 billion. But the cost of each Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite, used for routine secure communications globally as well as presidential command and control of nuclear forces, still exceeds the $1 billion mark.

Water may have interacted with Martian crust as recently as 2.1 billion years ago