HOUSTON — Recent NASA contracts awarded through the agency’s Johnson Space Center worth a potential $2 billion will equip the Orion program with an integration support contractor, while providing wider engineering, scientific and technical support through the Houston field center for the International Space Station (ISS), Orion, commercial crew/cargo initiatives and Mars science projects.

ILS says 'adverse conditions' caused damage to main engine turbo pump

U.S. Air Force officials will have to abandon round-the-clock missile warning and space situational awareness operations if the proposed round of deep sequestration cuts take effect next month, according to Gen. William Shelton, Air Force Space Command chief. Shelton says that he would be forced to “reduce some missile warning and space surveillance 24/7 hour operations to 8/7 hour operations” if the cuts take effect.

Russian cargo capsule carried out flawless accelerated docking

Azerbaijan launched its first satellite Feb. 7 atop an Ariane 5 ECA rocket from Europe’s equatorial spaceport in French Guiana. Built by Dulles, Va.-based Orbital Sciences Corp. for Azerbaijan satellite operator Azercosmos, the Azerspace/Africasat-1a spacecraft carries 24 C-band transponders and 12 Ku-band transponders to deliver communications coverage to Azerbaijan, Central Asia, Europe and Africa.

Teledyne Brown Engineering will continue to support International Space Station (ISS) operations at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and Marshall Space Flight Center under a mission operations and integration contract worth as much as $120.1 million over the next five years. The Huntsville, Ala.-based company will support all phases of flight under the cost-plus-award fee award, including mission preparation, crew and flight controller training, and meeting other requirements in real time.

Across-the-board budget cuts beginning March 1 could squeeze NASA funding by $14 billion over the next eight years, according to a report by Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee. A “constraint” in the bill that imposes sequestration mandates that funding for the Census Bureau follow its traditional pattern, the report says. The census is funded at low levels during the early years of the decade and higher levels later as the next census deadline draws near.

Asteroid 2012 DA14, speeding toward a record close approach to the Earth next week, poses no apparent danger to humans or orbiting satellites and will likely depart on a course-altering trajectory that should not bring it this way again, according to experts preparing for the encounter. Nonetheless, the attention-grabbing episode promises to serve as a reminder of a larger threat the world’s space powers are just beginning to size up.