NEW DELHI — India’s Mars Orbiter Mission is getting a boost, with the government allocating 1.25 billion rupees ($25 million) to the effort for the 2012-13 fiscal year. “The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) plans to launch a Mars orbiter as early as November 2013 with a scientific payload weighing nearly 25 kg [55 lb.],” according to the budget document, which was introduced in parliament March 16.

NASA WORK: NASA has selected four Texas companies to perform a range of engineering and architectural services for Johnson Space Center in Houston under five-year contracts worth a combined $49 million. They include PDG Architects; Reynolds, Smith and Hills Inc; and URS Group Inc., all of Houston; and HDR Architecture of Dallas. The agreements, announced March 22, cover feasibility studies; conceptual design work; engineering reports; budget estimates; and designs for alterations, new construction, repairs and refurbishment.

INTELSAT 22: The Intelsat 22 communications satellite is slated to launch on an International Launch Services Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, on March 25 at 8:10 a.m. EDT (6:10 p.m. local time). Based on Boeing’s 702MP satellite bus, the 6,200-kg (13,700-lb.) spacecraft will carry two Ku-band mobility beams providing coverage of the Indian Ocean region. From its position at 72 deg. East, it will serve the Middle East and eastern Africa with its Ku-band capacity.

HOUSTON — Researchers could be at work soon on new techniques for the detection and treatment of vision problems found in astronauts assigned to long-duration missions aboard the International Space Station (ISS). A report earlier this month in the journal Radiology, based on magnetic resonance imaging studies on 27 long-duration astronauts, found some with symptoms similar to idiopathic intercranial hypertension, including swelling of the optic nerve and an outward pressure on the eyeballs (Aerospace DAILY, March 15).

HOUSTON — NASA and its longtime partner, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), are positioning themselves to fund and restart the production of plutonium-238 within “six to seven years” as a power source for a range of possible missions to the outer Solar System, including those assigned to support the search for extraterrestrial life.

FORT EUSTIS, Va. — As it prepares to launch a technology demonstration for the next generation of rotorcraft, the U.S. Army’s aviation research arm has a series of smaller programs getting under way that will feed technology into the Joint Multi Role (JMR) effort. From avionics to engines, and airframes to weapons, the Aviation Applied Technology Directorate (AATD) at Fort Eustis, Va., has had an array of science and technology (S&T) programs ongoing since 2004 to lay the foundations for the Army’s next rotorcraft.

Two members of the House Appropriations subcommittee that sets NASA funding — a Democrat and a Republican — blasted the agency’s proposal to take a deep cut in its planetary-science accounts, and to drop out of its joint robotic Mars exploration effort with the European Space Agency (ESA).

NASA has selected 24 suborbital space technology payloads to fly this year and next on a mix of reusable commercial launch vehicles, high-altitude balloons and aircraft flying parabolas to briefly simulate weightlessness. Under the agency’s Flight Opportunities Program, 16 of the payloads will fly on the Zero-G parabolic aircraft; two will go on balloons from Near Space Corp. that fly above 65,000 ft.; five will fly on suborbital, reusable launch vehicles; and one will fly both on a balloon and a suborbital launch vehicle.