TAXING ISSUE: The U.S. aerospace and defense industry might have succeeded last year in helping to persuade Washington to reverse a looming tax withholding requirement on federal contractors, but two senators are not letting the original issue go away silently. Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), senior members of their chamber’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, are publicly pressing the Pentagon to explain what it is doing to help the government gain $4.5 million in unpaid taxes from one U.S.

The House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA funding has rejected the agency’s request to begin shutting down its cooperative Mars-exploration effort with the European Space Agency, until the issue can be debated thoroughly. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), the subcommittee chairman, rejected a fiscal 2012 reprogramming request that would have shifted funds immediately to accommodate the Mars-program downsizing set up in the fiscal 2013 budget request.

PARIS — Iridium CEO Matt Desch says his company will announce an agreement by June with global air traffic monitoring authorities to place automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) terminals on its Iridium Next second-generation satellite constellation, which is scheduled to be fully operational by 2017.

The FCC is extending the comment period until March 16 on a recent notice that LightSquared had not met the conditions set by the agency to begin operational deployment of a high-powered terrestrial 4G voice and data network in the L band. Citing concerns that the network would pose aviation safety risks by interfering with GPS units, the FCC last month indefinitely suspended LightSquared’s conditional waiver to operate the network in bands adjacent to those used by GPS (Aerospace DAILY, Feb. 16).

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden ran into a Capitol Hill buzz saw Wednesday regarding agency plans to cut funding for its internal development of the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion crew capsule, while adding more financial resources to support development of commercial crew transport vehicles.

LOS ANGELES — Boeing’s ongoing efforts to revive the fortunes of its commercial space business received another boost with confirmation of an agreement with mobile satellite service Artel to distribute Inmarsat-3, -4 and -5 bandwidth to potential U.S. government users. The deal, signed between Boeing Commercial Satellite Services and Artel, is initially focused on providing Ka-bandwidth on Inmarsat-3 and -4 satellites. Inmarsat-5 global satellite communications will be available in late 2013, the manufacturer says.

ATV LAUNCH: The European Space Agency (ESA) has set March 23 as the rescheduled date for the launch of the third Automated Transfer Vehicle, Edoardo Amaldi, on a five-month supply mission to the International Space Station. The liftoff from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, atop an Ariane 5 is scheduled for 12:31 a.m. EDT (4:31 GMT). Preparations leading to a March 9 liftoff were postponed on March 2.

XIAN, China — China would develop two large new engines, including one sized for a Moon rocket, under an apparently official plan set out by senior engineers associated with the country’s space propulsion industry. The proposed program would include re-engining the Long March 5 heavy launcher, which is still under development.