LOS ANGELES — Test pilots pushing Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2) toward a planned suborbital space flight in the coming months report the vehicle is rugged and stable, without any of the potential transonic flutter issues that could have bedeviled the design.

LADEE ARRIVES: NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (Ladee) has reached lunar orbit, one month after lifting off from Wallops Island, Va., on a Minotaur V solid-fuel rocket. Operated by a skeleton crew at Ames Research Center during the federal government shutdown, the 884-lb. orbiter fired its main engine early October 6 to enter an elliptical orbit. The orbit’s apogee will be lowered with subsequent burns to move the spacecraft into its commissioning orbit at 124-186 mi., where it will spend 40 days.

NASA has exempted the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (Maven) mission preparations from the federal government shutdown, primarily because the orbiter will be needed as a communications relay for the two rovers operating on the planet’s surface. Bruce Jakosky of the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder said in a post on the mission website that the agency “has analyzed the Maven mission relative to the Anti-Deficiency Act and determined that it meets the requirements allowing an emergency exception.”

Golden Spike is looking to 2015 for U.S. prime contractor selections to develop hardware for a series of $1.5 billion, two-person commercial lunar expeditions marketed primarily to foreign powers, industry and possibly a few wealthy adventurers.

NAVAL RESEARCH: The non-profit Center for the Advancement of Science in Space has awarded the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) a $250,000 grant to use the International Space Station’s hyperspectral imager to study halmful algal bloom in coastal areas around the world. Also known as red tide, the algal bloom releases toxins that are harmful to humans and marine life.

Engine will go on the shelf after development testing wraps up

PRIME TIME: NBC plans to broadcast a reality TV competition called “Space Race” that will offer a flight to the edge of space on the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo to its winner. The U.S. network signed a deal with Virgin Galactic and One Three Media, which produced Survivor, Celebrity Apprentice and other “unscripted series.” The production team will have “unprecedented access” to Virgin’s operations at Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, N.M., and will begin distribution activities at an upcoming marketing conference in Cannes, France.

Early peer-reviewed results of soil-sample analysis by an instrument on the Curiosity Mars rover hold potentially good news for future human explorers who will need to live off the land as much as possible, and bad news for scientists looking for evidence of past life on the planet. A scoop of geologic fines — dust and finely grained soil — collected for the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite inside the rover body detected water molecules that someday may be recovered by astronauts practicing in situ resource utilization (ISRU).