NASA's Latest COTS Award

NASA last week awarded Orbital Sciences Corporation funding for the demonstration of its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) proposal for resupplying the International Space Station.

What is particularly exciting about this development is that Orbital plans to conduct its Taurus II launches for this project from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island, Virginia. It will be exciting to take the three-hour drive down to watch these larger rockets liftoff, as I did for the two Minotaur launches in 2006 and last year.

Also last week, Wallops received a boost from passage of Virginia's "Zero-G/Zero-Tax" bill designed to spur new space industries in the state.