Still endorses the plans to modify Constellation Program Ares I hardware as most cost-effective approach

NASA may be able to return samples from Mars without significant international cooperation, in part by eliminating stovepipes in the way it organizes for scientific and human space missions.

HOUSTON — The B612 Foundation says it has made financial and technical strides in the first three months of the Silicon Valley non-profit’s bid to mount the world’s first private deep-space mission, a space telescope to greatly increase the identification of near Earth asteroids (NEAs) that could pose a collision threat.

NEW DELHI — India’s 101st space mission, the GSAT-10 communication satellite, will be launched Sept. 29 aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from the European spaceport at Kourou in French Guiana. “The 3.4-ton heavy satellite, GSAT-10, has been integrated with the Ariane 5 rocket along with Astra-2F spacecraft of SES as co-passenger for the launch Sept. 29 at 2:48 a.m. Indian time,” an Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) official says. Astra-2F belongs to the Luxembourg-based leading satellite operator SES.

Advanced configuration may actually drive some innovation in the field.

TOO CONFIDENT: Analysts at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) believe aerospace and defense executives may be “overconfident” in the information security practices at their respective organizations, given the trends of information security budget slashing, rising security incidents and accelerating technology development. The survey of more than 200 executives found that “72% of respondents are confident that they have instilled effective security behaviors into their organization’s culture, yet most do not have a process in place to handle third-party breaches,” PwC says.

The VTVL is a modified Falcon 9 first stage, part of ambitions to develop reusable booster to lower launch costs

Paris — Since 2009, the commercial launch sector estimates nearly $1 billion in new orders have gone to a single U.S. company developing a rocket that has yet to be flown. Over the past two years, Hawthorne, Calif.-based Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) proved its Falcon 9 medium-lift rocket can deliver unmanned payloads to low Earth orbit in two demonstration flights for NASA.