* International Launch Services (ILS) is to launch a US National Reconnaissance Office satellite, NROL-24, on an Atlas V in mid-2007. The final Atlas III was launched on 3 February from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying NROL-23. The same day, ILS launched SES Americom's AMC-12 communications satellite by Proton from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.
* NASA has selected Orbital Science's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (Ibex) as its next Small Explorer scientific spacecraft. Southwest Research Institute will lead the $134 million mission in 2008 to image the outer boundaries of the solar system.
* A team led by Johns Hopkins University has proposed that a new space telescope, the Hubble Origins Probe, be launched to allow the Hubble Space Telescope to be deorbited. By replicating and improving the Hubble design, the university says the new telescope would take just 65 months and $1 billion to build and launch.
Source: Flight International
