LOGAN, Utah — A growing market in the developing world for small satellites and demand for more capable orbital spacecraft like Darpa’s planned Phoenix testbed are behind ATK’s recent decision to broaden its line of small satellites.

Whelan also was asked by board members whether the service would consider triple launches of GPS satellites

The mission team has slowed the probe’s scheduled Aug. 25 gravitational escape from Vesta until early September

GREEN FUEL: NASA has picked Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo., to lead an orbital demonstration of a “green” spacecraft propellant alternative to hydrazine. While an efficient and storable propellant, hydrazine is highly corrosive and toxic. The team will develop and fly a high-performance green propellant, demonstrating and proving the performance of the integrated propulsion system. The agency’s Green Propellant Infusion Mission is expected to fly in about three years.

RUSSIAN LOSSES: A botched Russian launch junked two multimillion-dollar satellites last week that were to provide Indonesia and Russia with telecommunication services, adding to a series of failures that have dogged its space industry. Reuters reported that Russia’s space agency acknowledged the Aug. 7 failure of the upper stage of the launcher atop its workhorse Proton rocket. The error after takeoff from the Russian-leased Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan replicates a mishap that scrapped the $265 million Express AM-4 satellite last summer.

Efforts to improve cybersecurity have borne some fruit, potential blind spots remain

Aerospace and defense entities top the list of 'strategic' companies to protect against foreign takeovers

LOS ANGELES — NASA is on track to move the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover for the first time on the red planet’s surface around the middle of next week, according to controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California. Preparations for the move come midway through Sol 9 on Mars (Aug. 14), as the MSL team nears the halfway point in the lengthy process of checking out and commissioning the rover’s 10 major science instruments and other avionics and mechanical systems.