Work is underway at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center can help keep crews alive deep in the Solar System

NASA’s vision for deep-space exploration may be missing an opportunity to re-fortify the agency’s long-running but sporadic ties to nanotechnology, according to an assessment from Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

SLOW GOING: Orbital Sciences Corp. has once again postponed a flight demonstration of the Antares rocket and Cygnus cargo capsule it is developing under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. The Dulles, Va.-based company will slip the mission three or four months to next spring, following a flight demonstration of the rocket from the Wallops Island, Va., launch facility in December. Under the terms of a 2008 COTS agreement, the first flight of the rocket and cargo vessel was slated for late 2010.

HOUSTON — NASA will orchestrate a Nov. 1 spacewalk to address a long-standing cooling system leak outside the International Space Station that has gradually increased since June, the space agency announced on Oct. 19. Earlier concerns about an external electrical short on Sept. 3 that compromised one of the station’s eight power channels and prompted the preparations for a possible second near-term spacewalk, have eased with troubleshooting this week.

Scaled Composites is moving closer to the start of powered flight tests of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo

Congressional staffers have held preliminary meetings on updating the legislative underpinnings for the U.S. civil space program, but it’s clear nothing will be decided until the voters choose who’ll be running the program — and the rest of the government — in the upcoming election.

The platform is owned by NanoRacks LLC and developed jointly with Astrium North America

The 1 mm speck was discovered when the rover’s arm scooped out material for the sampling system