News Summaries for January 8

From Cape Breton to the Final Frontier (Source: Halifax Daily News)
Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, is getting closer to having its own launching pad to space. After a surprise announcement by a company few - if any - Nova Scotians had heard about in August, PlanetSpace has made progress in the $200 million project to have a launch pad built in Cape Breton. Since the announcement, the Chicago-based company has signed one contract with NASA and is said to be very close to signing another, says an executive with Nova Scotia Business Inc. The first NASA contract is for co-development of hardware. The other is about Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS), which is "where the private sector will be re-supplying the international space station doing the crew and cargo re-supply to the International Space Station when the fleet of Space Shuttles retires in 2010." The first was signed with the Marshall Space Flight Centre and the COTS contract with Johnson Space Flight Centre in Houston should be signed shortly. Despite repeat attempts, PlanetSpace would not return calls for comment.

ORBCOMM Nearly Doubles Subscribers in 2006 (SpaceDaily.com)
ORBCOMM reports that it ended 2006 with about 225,000 billable subscriber communicators on its data communications system, a 99% increase over the Company's subscriber communicator base of 113,000 at the end of 2005.

Commercial Space Legislation to be Considered by Va. Assembly (Source: Spaceports.blogspot)
The 2007 Virginia General Assembly is expected to consider commercial space legislation designed to boost commercial activity at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport. The legislation would task a joint subcommittee to study the development/utilization of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport with four primary goals: (i) identify any federal or state regulatory impediments, including taxation, to the development of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport; (ii) identify potential economic development opportunities and marketing strategies to attract launch companies to Virginia; (iii) identify potential state legal barriers to human spaceflight, including liability and assumption of risk issues; and (iv) develop a long-term strategic plan to make the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport the premiere commercial hub for space travel in the United States.

Another measure expected to be offered would create the Virginia Space Flight Libability and Immunity Act to provide specific warnings to commercial suborbital space flight passengers launched from Virginia and authorizing waivers of liability for commercial suborbital flights. The measure is also expected to grant tax exemptions to any commercial launch firm for (i) any gain recognized as a result of the sale of passenger tickets on a suborbital spaceflight conducted by a spaceflight entity; and, (ii) any gain recognized as a result of resupply services contracts entered with the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services division of NASA.