NUSTAR: NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuStar) high-energy X-ray observatory is on track for an 11:30 a.m. EDT launch June 13 by an Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL rocket dropped from a converted L-1011 commercial jet south of the Kwajalein atoll. During a teleconference from Kwajalein, NASA Launch Director Omar Baez said the drop, at 3:30 a.m. local time, will take place in a 120-mi. square “box” south of Kwajalein from an altitude of 41,000 ft.

HOUSTON — NASA’s Science Mission Directorate is canceling the over-budget Gravity and Extreme Magnetism Small Explorer (GEMS) astrophysics mission, following the denial this week of an appeal from the Goddard Space Flight Center-led science team, the agency announced June 7. Congress is being formally notified that the 2009 mission selection, capped at $119 million, not counting launch costs, is being canceled, says Paul Hertz, NASA’s astrophysics division director.

HOUSTON — A multinational crew of four is scheduled to evaluate a range of asteroid exploration strategies following a June 11 descent to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Aquarius Reef Base undersea habitat off Key Largo, Fla., for a 12-day stay.

China, France and Russia provide no upper limit on their coverage.

HOUSTON — The success of the SpaceX/Dragon resupply mission to the International Space Station has not been lost on Ad Astra Rocket Co., a seven-year-old venture focused on the development of advanced electric plasma propulsion systems for commercial in-space transportation. “That is the proof in the pudding,” says Jared Squire, Ad Astra’s senior vice president for research, of the nine-day SpaceX pathfinder mission nurtured by NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. “That type of relationship works.”

NASA will get a little slack from Congress on how it may procure commercial crew transportation for astronauts headed to the International Space Station (ISS), but apparently no more money.

Two other spacecraft based on the 1300 bus are due for launch this month.

A Sea Launch Zenit 3-SL orbited the Intelsat 19 telecommunications satellite early June 1 from the Odyssey floating launch pad, setting up a replacement in orbit next month for the aging Intelsat 8.