President Barack Obama’s budget release will be delayed a week until Feb. 13, an administration official confirms. “The date was determined based on the need to finalize decisions and technical details of the document,” the official said in an email, adding that in keeping with efforts to rein in the federal deficit, the administration will not distribute paper copies of the budget. The administration is supposed to submit its budget to Congress on the first Monday of February. The Obama administration has met that deadline just once — in 2010.

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR) has sent an unsolicited proposal to United Launch Alliance (ULA) that would cut the price of RL10 rocket engines by 25%, and by almost half from the levels reached in summer 2010.

COATS HONORED: Michael Coats, director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, will receive the National Space Trophy, an award presented annually by the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement Foundation in recognition of career contributions to the exploration of space. The award will be presented in Houston on April 27. Coats joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 1978 as a Navy test pilot. He commanded and piloted three shuttle flights before leaving the space agency in 1991 to pursue a career as an aerospace executive. Coats rejoined NASA in 2005 as Johnson’s 10th director.

DYING COMET: Scientists at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo Alto, Calif., have used the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly instrument on board NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory to observe the final death throes of a comet as it passed about 0.2 solar radii off the limb of the Sun. The comet was first discovered July 4, 2011, using the Large Angle and Spectrometric Chronograph aboard the NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory and named C/2011 N3 (SOHO).

The demise of the Delta II rocket family and continuing uncertainty over the performance of newer small and medium-lift successors are forcing NASA to delay the allocation of launch vehicles to upcoming science missions.

PARIS — European Space Agency subsidies intended to offset high fixed costs incurred by the Arianespace commercial launch consortium could be unnecessary by decade’s end if ESA members agree to invest a little over €1 billion ($1.3 billion) to upgrade the Ariane 5 rocket, according to Astrium Chief Executive Francois Auque.

Boeing reports the fourth Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) military communications satellite is “healthy and ready to begin orbital maneuvers and operational testing” following its Jan. 19 launch from Cape Canaveral AFS, Fla. The 7,600-lb. spacecraft, based on a Boeing 702 platform, was lifted into orbit on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV in a Medium-plus configuration. It was ULA’s first launch of the year and the Delta IV’s 18th. Contact with it was made 58 min. after liftoff.

HOUSTON — NASA’s Multi-Mission Space Exploration Vehicle (MMSEV), now in its third generation, is emerging from a five-year Johnson Space Center-led research and technology effort as a versatile component of still-forming U.S. human space exploration plans.