“It hasn't been splatted by the Internet” is how a friend once described an Ethiopian village she'd visited. Her short sentence reveals the nostalgia for a simpler life felt by many in the developed world who have never experienced it themselves, and a truth about the economic position of the so-called dark continent.

Controllers guiding NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) are planning their next trajectory-correction maneuver on March 26, after a major burn Jan. 11 sent the big rover and its Atlas V upper stage on their separate ways. A 3-hr. series of thruster pulses set up the rover for an Aug. 6 powered descent into Gale Crater, while the upper stage was left to proceed away from the planet. The Nov. 26 launch was deliberately targeted away from Mars to prevent the upper stage from plummeting into the Martian environment with Earthly contaminants.

A multibillion-dollar annual market for space tourism and launch services could emerge within the next five years, projects suborbital spaceflight hopeful XCOR Aerospace, which aims to begin flight tests of its first Lynx reusable launch vehicle by year-end.

Operational satellite networks that routinely monitor Earth's climate in the same way meteorological satellites watch the weather today will be extremely useful as the links between human activity and long-term environmental conditions become better understood, and perhaps more dangerous. It is an opportunity the aerospace industry cannot afford to pass up, given its unique ability to address climate-change issues.

Despite its programmatic progress and status as an acquisition reform program for the U.S. Air Force, GPS III—as with any other Pentagon project—is under the microscope and could be subject to funding cuts. The budget environment at the Pentagon gives new meaning to the term “capture team,” which is used to describe the group assigned by a company to win a program. Many contractors say they feel they are in a perpetual “capture team” mode, constantly fighting not only to win programs, but to keep them once they have won the contract.

The uncontrolled reentry of Russia's stranded Phobos-Grunt spacecraft presented a moving target to satellite trackers just days before pieces of the botched Mars mission were expected to fall to Earth.

Engineers developing the heavy-lift SLS are polling the worldwide launch industry in search of an upper stage.

The past year has seen a lot of turbulence in the stock market, but there have been a few bright spots for investors in aerospace and defense companies. Shares in suppliers of aerospace components fared particularly well in 2011 as Airbus and Boeing ramped up output, and soaring order numbers added to the airframers' already bulging backlogs. Notable performers among suppliers include Hexcel (up 34%), TransDigm Group (33%), Triumph Group (31%), Sifco Industries (23%), Rolls-Royce (20%), Precision Castparts (18%), Safran (12%) and Moog (10%).