NASA’s Space Technology Program, upgraded this week into a full-fledged mission directorate at the agency’s headquarters, is funding development of an electric-thruster technology that holds promise both in propulsion for tiny cubesats and as a lightweight replacement for attitude-control and in-space propulsion systems on larger spacecraft.

Marks major milestone for the Mars Science Laboratory project

Nearly 3-hr. loss was triggered by an onboard computer process

MIND THE GAPS: Congressional auditors in Washington who have been keeping a running tally of the government’s highest-risk programs since 1990 have now added the need to mitigate gaps in federal weather satellite data to their list. “We and others ... have raised concerns that problems and delays on environmental satellite acquisition programs will result in gaps in the continuity of critical satellite data used in weather forecasts and warnings,” the Government Accountability Office said Feb. 14.

NASA’s topline budget would be reduced by $726.7 million

PARIS — Astrium, the space division of EADS, will begin development of Europe’s first digital military ultrafast broadband satellite communications network under a roughly €40 million ($52 million) contract awarded by French defense procurement agency DGA.

Government gridlock and myopic Wall Street horizons are hindering development of a new economic sector in low Earth orbit, because both make private financing for commercial space ventures hard to find, according to a panel of space-finance experts speaking in Washington this week.

Simulator passed eighth in a series of airborne drop tests