New Space Race #2

North Korea:

North Korea placed...something...in orbit.  It appears the satellite is tumbling and probably is unusable.  The US has stated the satellite orbit is stable, but the sat is NOT transmitting.  It appears the Norks have been able to stabilize the sat: its no longer tumbling.

Apparently the rocket that launched the satellite had twice the payload of the previous one.  This is, of course, a concern.

Russia:

The Russians have significant doubts about reusable rockets and will be retiring the Rockot.

Europe:

Luxembourg is getting into the asteroid mining race!  The country will be implementing a legal framework to do that same thing as the US Congress did to allow for mining offworld, will be investing in asteroid mining companies, and act as a tax haven for those companies (of course!).

Magna Parva has launched an 'in-space manufacturing' website.

The European Space Agency has released its roadmap for the future.

USA:

The White House released its proposed 2017 NASA budget.

NASA has released more details about the selection of the new cargo contracts to the ISS.

Congress wants a solid roadmap to get to Mars from NASA.

NASA's EM-1 Orion capsule has been delivered to Kennedy Space Flight Center.  And here.

Watch the EM-1 Orion being built.

NASA will be launching several cubesats into deep space and to the Moon on the first SLS launch.

The US Air Force is disputing why the United Launch Alliance refused to bid on the new GPS satellite launch and is quite angry.

The US Air Force is also going to spend over $1.2 billion over the next 5 years to replace the Russian engines in the Atlas V or develop a new rocket to effectively do the same thing.