Faces shrinking budgets and fewer new program opportunities

The U.S. House of Representatives has mostly protected the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) environmental satellite programs in its fiscal 2013 markup this year. The House spending bill for NOAA, passed in May, made significant cuts to three programs, including Jason-3, which will provide precise measurements of ocean surface heights. Jason-3 is one of four programs that Senate appropriators, impatient with delays and overruns, took away from NOAA and gave to NASA. (See chart below.)

Company reports advances in the performance of its 200-kw Vasimr plasma rocket engine prototype

BIG DEAL: The U.S. Justice Department and the European Commission gave final approvals to United Technologies Corp.’s (UTC) acquisition of Goodrich, clearing the way for UTC to close on its $18.4 billion mega-merger July 26. Hartford, Conn.-based UTC expects to see $8 billion in synergies from the deal this year, according to CEO Louis Chenevert.

Russia plans to follow the anticipated July 27 arrival of Japan’s unpiloted HTV-3 resupply craft with a second attempt to re-dock the Progress 47

Also coming this summer is the certified pricing proposal from United Launch Alliance for its Atlas V and Delta IV booster cores

HOUSTON — NASA’s 11-year-old Mars Odyssey spacecraft has been repositioned along its polar orbit around the red planet to provide a near-real-time communication link with Earth during the Mars Science Laboratory’s Aug. 6 entry and landing. News of the $2.5 billion rover mission’s fate should reach NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., through Odyssey on Aug. 6 at 1:31 a.m. EDT, nearly 14 min. after the actual landing — the time it will take X-band transmissions to cover the 154 million mi. separating the two planets.

NASA is pressing to use everything from robots to Russians in an effort to stretch the crew time available for research