The coming decade should bring strong growth to the global satellite production and launch industry, according to the Paris-based consulting company Euroconsult, which forecasts $198 billion in revenues for the 2012-2021 period, a 36% increase over the previous 10 years. Demand from established government space programs, as well as a commercial sector faced with replacing aging telecommunications spacecraft, will drive the anticipated demand despite global economic concerns.

Boeing Defense, Space and Security is restructuring its business units once again, undoing some of the changes it enacted only two years ago in an effort to reap savings that it can pass on to more frugal defense customers worldwide.

May further delay launch of its Orbital Test Vehicle-3 mission

Laying groundwork with $84.3 million worth of contracts issued to 17 companies

Researchers in three projects will split grants from the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (Casis) totaling $1.2 million to take advantage of the microgravity environment on the International Space Station for pharmaceutical research. Casis, set up to run the public portion of the U.S. National Laboratory on the ISS, awarded its first research grants to scientists at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, California Institute of Technology and iXpressGenes Inc.

NASA’s Glenn Research Center is looking for large fairings and adapters for the agency’s heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS). In a request for information published Nov. 1, the Cleveland-based field center asks industry to suggest options for fairings and payload adapters that can expand the big rocket’s ability to carry cargo and spacecraft to orbit.

Next target is ground systems and ascent preliminary design review

Controllers are checking out two large spacecraft built by Russia’s ISS-Reshetnev after their successful tandem launch on a Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome Nov. 2. Separating from the Proton’s Breeze-M upper stage were the Yamal 300K telecommunications bird, and a space station relay satellite designated Luch 5B.