ASTEROID ALTERNATIVES: The chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology is criticizing the Obama administration for continuing to “push” its proposed Asteroid Retrieval Mission, “without any connection to a larger exploration road map and absent support from the scientific community or NASA’s own advisory bodies.” Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) points instead to a “promising” proposal for a flyby mission to Mars and Venus in 2021 that his committee recently heard testimony on.

BEIJING — Full-scale development of Japan’s next major space launcher will begin on April 1, following the formal, and expected, selection of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) as prime contractor.

The recently launched joint U.S./Japanese Global Precipitation Mission (GPM) spacecraft has transmitted early imagery that distinguishes between rain and snowfall associated with an extra tropical cyclone over the northwest Pacific Ocean, signaling a steady stream of improved data for global weather and climate models. GPM data is expected to enhance the forecasting of hurricanes, flooding, landslides and droughts.

New details about communications between the missing Malaysia Airlines 777-200 and an Inmarsat satellite show an additional, “partial ping” occurred 8 min. after the final hourly contact between the aircraft and spacecraft. Using an analysis of satellite data furnished by London-based Inmarsat, Britain’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) says evidence of the final, partial signal between the MH370’s L-band terminal and Inmarsat’s gateway Earth station occurred March 8, when the plane vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

A functioning U.S. lunar base could be operating at one of the Moon’s poles in a decade, given the decision to build it and the resources to follow through, lunar-exploration experts say.

A bipartisan group of 30 House lawmakers is urging President Barack Obama to “chart and clearly state a vision and timeline for the nation in deep-space exploration,” based on the heavy-lift Space Launch System and Orion crew capsule spelled out in authorization and funding legislation for NASA.

Tight budgets and a different threat environment make it both necessary and possible to save taxpayer money on expensive military space hardware, particularly if commercial practices can be applied to some aspects of milspace procurement, according to industry and government representatives who helped draft a new Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) report on the subject.

ORION SLIP: The first spaceflight of NASA’s Orion crew capsule, with an instrumented prototype riding atop a Delta IV Heavy, may not come until December. Originally scheduled for September, the Experimental Test Flight-1 (EFT-1) mission first was first bumped to October by range-scheduling issues at Cape Canaveral AFS, Fla. Now it has slipped to Dec. 4, according to Orion prime Lockheed Martin, with a “protect date” in October in case the logjam clears.