PARIS — Arianespace will loft the Eutelsat 25B and Indian G-Sat 7 satellites together on an Ariane 5 by the end of August, following the launch of Europe’s Alphasat I-XL and India’s Insat 3D atop the heavy-lift rocket July 25. The missions will mark the third and fourth of a planned five Ariane 5 launches in 2013, says Arianespace CEO Stephane Israel, who took the helm of the European launch consortium in April.

NEW DELHI — The Indian space agency’s Mars Orbiter Mission is on target to lift off in the third week of October. “The Mars mission is getting ready at our Satellite Centre in Bengaluru [in southern India],” says Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Chairman K. Radhakrishnan. “We are planning to start stacking [the launch vehicle] from July 29, and the launch will be any day from Oct. 21 from the spaceport at Sriharikota.” Following the launch, the mission is expected to take eight months to reach Mars.

Bucking their Republican counterparts and the Obama White House, Democrats on the House Science Committee are offering an “alternative” NASA reauthorization that sets a 15-year goal of landing humans on Mars.

NEW DELHI — India has raised doubts regarding the launch of its second robotic lunar mission — Chandrayaan II — due to development delays with its Russian-furnished lander. Due to launch next year, Chandraayan II will include an unmanned orbiter, a lander supplied by the Russian space agency Roscosmos, and a rover to be developed by India for in-situ scientific exploration of the lunar surface.

Telespazio has been awarded a €216 million ($277 million) contract by the European Satellite Service Provider, ESSP SAS, as part of the European Union’s Egnos satellite navigation overlay program.

GeoMetWatch, a startup that is building on its engineers’ experience developing an unflown government hyperspectral weather sounder to produce commercial weather hosted payloads, has entered a Space Act Agreement (SAA) with NASA to exchange data from orbit for surplus hardware and calibration services.

NASA has offered its expertise and test facilities to potential lunar-lander partners

HOUSTON — International Space Station astronauts Chris Cassidy of NASA and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency plan to further prepare the six-person orbiting laboratory for the arrival of Russia’s Nauka Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MLM) during a pair of July spacewalks that will include external alterations to ready the outpost for possible power and cooling system failures.