HOUSTON — Astronauts aboard the International Space Station launched three CubeSats early Nov. 19, using a deployment mechanism aboard the orbiting lab’s Kibo Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) that was successfully demonstrated last year. A fourth satellite is scheduled for release early Nov. 20. The first wave, ejected with the Small Satellite Orbital Satellite Deployer (SSOSD) from the Kibo exposed facility at 7:17 a.m. EST, included:

Click here to view the pdf

NEW DELHI — After the successful launch of India’s first Mars orbiter, scientists are planning the country’s next mission — this time to the Sun. On Nov. 18, solar physicists from across the country started three-day talks at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), based in the southern city of Bengaluru, to prepare for the country’s first solar mission, Aditya-1, which will carry equipment to study the Sun’s corona.

HOUSTON — Project Morpheus is returning to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center this week for several months of testing to demonstrate an autonomous, methane/liquid oxygen fueled precision planetary lander capability for future human as well as robotic missions. The first Morpheus lander was destroyed on Aug. 9, 2012, in a fiery crash within moments of lifting off from a Kennedy test area, cutting short an ambitious series of free flight tests.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA’s latest mission to Mars lifted off through scattered clouds Nov. 18, setting out on a 10-month voyage to discover what happened to the red planet’s water by literally sniffing its upper atmosphere. Liftoff of the Lockheed Martin-built Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (Maven) spacecraft from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral came at 1:28 p.m. EST, the opening of its 2-hr. launch window.

Engineering graduate and undergraduate students are displaying heightened interest in space-related studies as entrepreneurial space start-ups get ready to start flying, panelists discussing the role of academia in the burgeoning “New Space” movement said Nov. 15.

Phobos, the small irregularly shaped moon of Mars whose origins remain a mystery, may offer a repository for small amounts of soil and rock originating from the red planet, according to a study by Brown University scientists associated with Russia’s failed 2011 Phobos-Grunt sample return mission.

The U.S. Air Force’s upcoming Operationally Responsive Space-3 (ORS-3) demonstration, poised for launch Nov. 19 from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island, Va., is aimed at demonstrating a bevy of new technologies, as well as “commercial-like” launch processes that could reduce the cost of future national security space missions.