Aerojet weighs higher bid for ULA —  Orbital ATK, Aerojet settle engine dispute — China lofts 1st Long March 11 — House, Senate leaders ready clean CR

• Aerojet is considering making a higher bid for United Launch Alliance. The company is meeting with outside advisers this week to consider options after its initial $2 billion offer was rejected, according to a report. Those options could include making a larger offer to acquire ULA, but may also include other strategic alternatives, such as breaking up the company. [Reuters]
• China said it successfully launched the first Long March 11 rocket Thursday. The small rocket lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 9:41 p.m. Eastern time and placed four small satellites into orbit. The solid-fueled rocket, which may be based on a mobile-launched ballistic missile, is intended for the rapid launch of microsatellites. [Xinhua]
• Orbital ATK will receive $50 million from Aerojet to end a dispute over a rocket engine used on the Antares. Aerojet’s AJ-26 engine was implicated in last October’s failure of an Antares rocket, but the companies disagreed on whether the engine itself was flawed. Aerojet will pay Orbital the $50 million by the end of the month, and will take ownership of the ten remaining AJ-26 engines Orbital had planned to use on Antares. Orbital is in the processing of upgrading the Antares to use the RD-181 engine, with a first launch planned for no earlier than March. [Reuters]
• Two key House members are critical of NOAA’s proposed commercial weather data policy. In a letter this week to NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan, Reps. Lamar Smith and Jim Bridenstine said that while the draft policy requires commercial providers to meet certain “quality standards” before NOAA will purchase the data, those standards are not yet available. The policy, they argue, may make purchasing satellite weather data from commercial providers “unnecessarily complex.” [SpaceNews]
• NASA says it will announce the solution to a Martian “mystery” Monday. An 11:30 a.m. Eastern press conference Monday will feature planetary scientists and NASA officials, including the principal investigator for the high-resolution camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The agency offered no details on the “major science finding” to be announced, but some of the participants are giving a paper Monday at a European planetary science conference on the source of dark streaks seen on some slopes. [NASA / EPSC]

Pluto in Technicolor

A day after teasing “Science in technicolor!” on Twitter, NASA’s New Horizons mission lived up to the hype, releasing this “enhanced color view” of the planet Thursday, taken the day the spacecraft made its closest approach to the dwarf planet. The wide variety of colors tell “a complex geological and climatological story that scientists have only just begun to decode,” with many more images and other data from the flyby still to come. [NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI]

• House and Senate leaders are working to get a “clean” continuing resolution (CR) passed to fund the government. The Senate Thursday rejected a proposed CR that included a provision stripping funds from Planned Parenthood, and will move forward on a clean CR without that language on Monday. House Speaker John Boehner is said to be working on a similar strategy to get a clean CR passed that would fund the government through early December. A spending bill must be passed by Wednesday to avoid a government shutdown when the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1. [POLITICO]
• SpaceX tested the upgraded version of its Falcon 9 rocket this week. The company released Thursday video of a 15-second static fire test of the vehicle that took place earlier this week at the company’s McGregor, Texas, test site. The upgraded version uses densified propellants and had other upgrades to produce additional thrust. SpaceX’s Elon Musk, meanwhile, said he anticipated a return to flight of the Falcon 9, likely of that upgraded version, in the next six to eight weeks. [YouTube / Twitter @pbdes]
• Proposed commercial space stations have to deal with regulatory and economic uncertainty. Developers and other proponents of commercial stations said it’s not clear how such facilities would be regulated, although the FAA is interested in taking on that role. Markets are also uncertain, as NASA’s interest in microgravity research may not translate to commercial stations for the foreseeable future. Alternative markets include carrying people, for national space agencies or as tourists, or other applications. [SpaceNews]
• The competitive landscape for commercial satellite imagery providers is changing. Established companies are facing competition from both new commercial entrants as well as nations that decide to fly their own satellites. Prices for both medium- and high-resolution images are projected to drop substantially over the next decade as more imagery becomes available. [SpaceNews]
• An astronaut flying to the space station later this year plans on taking it easy before launch. Tim Kopra was on the crew of the final flight of the shuttle Discovery in 2011 when he broke his hip in a bike accident six weeks before launch, forcing him to be removed from the mission. Kopra said he’s not planning doing any biking before his December launch to the ISS: “I’m trying to live in bubble wrap until we launch.” [Houston Chronicle]
• A SETI scientist takes issue with Edward Snowden’s explanation on why we haven’t detected alien signals. Snowden said in a recent interview that the use of quantum encryption could make any signals sound like background noise, rendering them undetectable. But longtime SETI researcher Seth Shostak disagrees, saying that even if a signal was encrypted, the strong, focused signal itself should be detectable. [LiveScience]

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