A remote-sensing satellite built by China and Brazil failed to reach low Earth orbit following a Dec. 9 launch atop a Chinese Long March 4B rocket from the Taiyuan space center in northern China, according to Brazil’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. In a Dec. 9 statement the ministry said the rocket carrying the CBERS 3 satellite malfunctioned after liftoff at 11:26 a.m. local time and that it failed to deliver the satellite to its intended Sun-synchronous orbit at 770 km altitude.

An International Launch Services (ILS) Proton M/Briz M rocket successfully orbited the first of four new all-Ka-band satellites Dec. 9 for London-based fleet operator Inmarsat, delivering the Boeing-built spacecraft to supersynchronous transfer orbit during a 15-hr. and 31-min. mission.

Scientists have found new evidence that ultra-low frequency (ULF) waves are a force behind the long-mysterious acceleration of highly energetic plasma particles within the Earth’s Van Allen Belts to near-speed-of-light velocities. The findings come from data gathered by NASA’s twin Van Allen Probes.

KEPLER REVIVAL: NASA has given the green light to continued work on a plan to extend its crippled Kepler Space Telescope mission by using an orbital maneuver to compensate for the loss of two of the spacecraft’s four gyro-like reaction wheels. “To be clear, this is not a decision to continue operating the Kepler spacecraft or to conduct a two-wheel extended mission,” Paul Hertz, head of NASA’s astrophysics division, said last week.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V 501 successfully launched the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office’s classified NROL-39 mission from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., at 11:13 p.m. Pacific Time on Dec. 5.

PARIS — NASA will seek a supplemental role aboard the European Space Agency’s (ESA) next two large astrophysics missions, including a new-generation X-ray telescope and a gravitational wave observatory.

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The U.S.-led search for the existence of extraterrestrial life has reached a threshold, primarily through the discovery of alien planets made by NASA’s Kepler space telescope, making it theoretically possible that the biosignatures of gases produced by microbial life on planets circling nearby stars could be detected within a decade, experts told the House Science, Space and Technology Committee in a Dec. 4 hearing.