NEW DELHI — India is lining up international customers for its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) as the country looks to boost its share of the global launch market. Antrix Corp., the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), has signed an agreement with Singapore Technologies Electronics Ltd. to launch its first commercial satellite, TeLEOS-1.

ORLANDO, Fla. — The U.S. Air Force is planning to launch two new and previously classified space situational awareness satellites into geosynchronous orbit this year, according to Gen. William Shelton, who leads Air Force Space Command. The spacecraft were developed covertly by the Air Force and Orbital Sciences under the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSAP), according to service officials.

LOS ANGELES — Engineers at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center are completing key load tests on elements of a large hypersonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerator (HIAD) that ultimately could enable larger payloads to be delivered to the surface of other planets, or returned to Earth.

HOUSTON — After a dozen years, NASA’s university-level student rocket competition is growing more difficult — much more like the real-life efforts to introduce powerful new propulsion sources like the agency’s deep space-enabling Space Launch System heavy lift rocket.

Satellite observations of unique, finger-like dark features on steep slopes of the mid-southern latitudes of Mars hint at dense briny water flows during the summer season, according to findings from 11 researchers associated with NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and Mars Odyssey missions.

HOUSTON — Orbital Sciences Corp. successfully completed its first NASA-contracted resupply mission to the International Space Station early Feb. 18, as the Dulles, Va.-based company’s “Orb-1” Cygnus capsule was unberthed from the U.S. segment Harmony module and released with Canada’s robot arm at 6:41 a.m. EST. The resupply craft is scheduled for a destructive re-entry through the Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean at 1:20 p.m. EST on Feb. 19.

NEW DELHI — India’s first manned space flight program has received a major boost with a higher budgetary allocation and development of a crew module structural assembly. The federal interim budget, announced on Feb. 17, increased the allocation for the human space flight program from 92 million rupees ($1.5 million) to 170 million rupees. The increase comes days after state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) handed over the crew module to the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).

HOUSTON — The terrifying Chelyabinsk explosion over Russia one year ago has significantly altered the debate over efforts to detect and deflect asteroids that pose an impact threat to the Earth, according to one of the nation’s top experts in the field. “It was a wake-up call for the world,” said David Morrison, senior scientist at NASA’s recently established Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI), at the Ames Research Center Feb. 14.