An Australian research team hoping to conduct a free flight Mach 8 test of a novel inlet-fueled scramjet is investigating what prevented the hypersonic flight experiment from reaching the correct test conditions.

While NASA’s engineers plot the next steps in human spaceflight and Congress struggles with the cost, the 100 Year Starship nonprofit is focused on an aggressive interstellar journey with the best humanity has to offer. Launched with a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Project Agency in early 2012, the group, led by former NASA astronaut and physician Mae Jemison, is now reaching out on its own with a cultural and socially inclusive vision of human daring that echoes the themes that Star Trek and Star Wars sounded generations ago.

Measurements of methane in the Martian atmosphere made by the Tunable Laser Spectrometer aboard NASA’s Curiosity rover since the August 2012 landing in Gale Crater find surface concentrations of the gaseous hydrocarbon much too low to support subsurface biological activity as a source.

When the nearest hardware store is 350 mi. straight down, tool control takes on a whole new dimension. Take away gravity, and air, and it gets even harder. Just ask Jill McGuire, a private pilot who was also the engineer in charge of crew aids and tools for the last servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope in May 2009. “You have to take everything with you,” she says. “You don't get a chance to run to Home Depot.”

WALLOPS FLIGHT FACILITY, Va. – Orbital Sciences Corp. has enough hardware on hand for the 10 commercial cargo missions it has contracted with NASA, and is already looking ahead to the day when it runs out of the surplus Soviet-era Russian engines it uses to power its new Antares launch vehicle.

Sierra Nevada is conducting flight readiness reviews for the first drop test of the Dream Chaser lifting body at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards AFB, Calif., amid wider preparations for the company’s first Commercial Crew critical design review (CDR).

Conditions are good for the first flight to the International Space Station of the Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares rocket with a Cygnus commercial cargo carrier, which would give NASA two ways to resupply station crews with food, clothing and hardware.

Boeing and Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), the competitors proposing capsule-based concepts for NASA’s Commercial Crew program, are approaching an intense period of key test and development milestones, made busier by new targets added by the space agency.