HOUSTON — Robonaut 2, a NASA and General Motors collaboration to develop an astronaut-friendly humanoid, is due a pair of legs and a battery backpack later this year to give it more mobility inside and eventually outside the International Space Station. The two-armed, camera and force-sensor-laced torso launched to the station aboard a February 2011 space shuttle mission. It has been restrained to a stanchion in the station’s U.S. Destiny laboratory since it was awakened electronically for the first time late the following August.

Reaffirms support for mix of government, commercial human spaceflight

HOUSTON — Astronauts assigned to multi-month or multi-year missions to near-Earth asteroids and Mars may face an accelerated onset of Alzheimer’s-like symptoms from cosmic radiation exposure, according to a NASA-funded study by researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) that used mice as subjects.

Hurricane Sandy came and went in late 2012, as did many of the startup issues at Virginia’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), elevating the prospects that Orbital Sciences Corp. will complete its NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Systems program milestones in the new year and begin lucrative cargo deliveries to the International Space Station.

SPACE LEGISLATION: Congress on Jan. 2 extended for one year an indemnification program allowing the government to share the cost with industry against injuries or property damage suffered by the public in a commercial space launch. The House sought a two-year extension, but the Senate shortened the timeline. The bill also provides a waiver through 2020 allowing U.S. astronauts to fly aboard Russian spacecraft to gain access to the International Space Station.

Five years ago, the idea of easing export controls on commercial satellites was politically unthinkable. That mindset has changed during the last half-decade, as the idea that those restrictions are harming both national security and the U.S. industrial base has gradually gained traction. And now, during a year in which the U.S. Congress barely passed even routine bills, lawmakers came together to shed long-standing restrictions on the export of commercial satellites.

Engineers reached a milestone in the development of the parachute recovery system for NASA’s Orion deep space crew vehicle on Dec. 20, as a 21,000-lb. spacecraft simulator floated to an intact landing at the U.S. Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, following an intentional drogue chute failure. Drop tests of the four-person capsule are scheduled to resume in February with an intentional main chute failure.

An engineering board has cleared the first element of NASA’s heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) for preliminary manufacturing, keeping the big new government-owned rocket on track for a first flight with the Orion multipurpose crew vehicle in 2017.