ISU and the Singularity University will close out their sessions at NASA Ames on Friday. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden is listed on the ISU schedule. However, his appearance is reportedly contingent on NASA launching the space shuttle Discovery in time for him to travel to the West Coast.

NASA PRESS RELEASE

Students at the International Space University (ISU) Space Studies Program (SSP) 2009 and Singularity University (SU) will share their last evening together at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., at their universities’ closing ceremonies on Friday, Aug. 28, 2009.

The closing ceremonies for the 22nd annual ISU SSP, the inaugural class of SU are by invitation only.

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The launch of the space shuttle Discovery was scrubbed on Tuesday for the second day in a row. This scrub was due to a valve problem. Bad weather caused the earlier delay.

NASA’s LCROSS lunar probe used up most of its fuel supply over the weekend when it was hit by a control problem with its Inertial Reference Unit, causing excess thruster firing. Initial reports were that about 70 percent of the fuel was used up.

LCROSS is composed of a Centaur upper stage and a small satellite. The upper stage will crash into the south pole of the moon while the satellite flies through the resulting plume to search for water and other elements. Having sufficient fuel is crucial in order to precisely guide the Centaur into a crater likely to contain water.

NASA officials believe this is still an achievable goal if nothing else goes wrong. Below are some up-to-date Tweets from NASA Ames Director Pete Worden from Tuesday afternoon PDT as well as the official NASA press release sent out on Monday evening.

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Poor weather. In Florida. In summertime. Who’d a thunk it!

Behind the Scenes With the World’s Most Ambitious Rocket Makers
Popular Mechanics

An improbable partnership between an Internet mogul and an engineer could revolutionize the way NASA conducts missions—and, if these iconoclasts are successful, send paying customers into space.

Mueller’s ambitious moonlighting caught the attention of Internet multimillionaire Elon Musk, who met the engineer at the warehouse in January 2002 as Mueller was trying to attach his homemade engine to an airframe. Fresh from the $1.5 billion sale of PayPal to eBay, Musk was seeking staff for a new space company, soon to be called Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX. He eyed the rocket engine and asked a simple question: “Can you build something bigger?”

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Artists conception of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft in orbit

NASA May Outsource Amid Budget Woes
Wall Street Journal

For the first time since the advent of manned space exploration, the U.S. appears ready to outsource to private companies everything from transporting astronauts to ferrying cargo into orbit.

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The Space Review looks at how space advocates have coped with the end of Apollo, how the space elevator community is dealing with a lack of progress, and what the military is doing launching a satellite called PAN.

Richard Branson poses with Virgin Galactic ticketholders and staff members in front of WhiteKnightTwo.

Sunday Herald and BBC pick up on For Argyll’s campaign to attract Virgin Galactic to Machrihanish
For Argyll

If Virgin Galactic did opt for Machrihanish as their UK Spaceport, imagine what that would mean for Argyll. Every run up to a launch; every batch of space tourists arriving for a panoramic view like no other and a brief shot of weightlessness; every launch, every return….

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This image of Victoria Crater in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at more of a sideways angle than earlier orbital images of this crater.

Russia Reveals Vision for Manned Spaceflight
IEEE Spectrum

The Russian Federal Space Agency’s hope is that its plan will become the basis for a broad international effort to send humans to Mars and build a permanent base on the surface of the moon.

In contrast to NASA efforts, which would use the moon as a stepping-stone on the way to Mars, the latest Russian space doctrine aims for Mars first.

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SpaceX making steady progress on new rocket
Spaceflight Now

SpaceX continues to plan to debut the new Falcon 9 rocket by the end of this year, but company engineers are still qualifying some parts of the vehicle for the rigors of launch.

“We’re not down to an exact date, but we are targeting the end of the year. And so far, so good,” said Tim Buzza, SpaceX’s vice president of launch operations.

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ASTROGENETIX PRESS RELEASE

Along with supply and equipment cargo bound for the International Space Station, Space Shuttle Discovery STS-128 will carry an additional scientific payload being conducted by Austin-based Astrogenetix, the first commercial space company to use microgravity to discover the foundation of new medicines.

Specifically, research will be conducted on Staphylococcus aureus and Salmonella microbes in search of a potential target for a therapeutic agent or vaccine candidate. These bacterial microbes are known to cause hundreds of thousands of medically diagnosed infections every year around the world.

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Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island, Virginia

McDonnell unveils plans to further develop Spaceport
Delmarvanow

Bob McDonnell, Republican gubernatorial nominee and former Attorney General of Virginia, traveled to the Eastern Shore Thursday to tour the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island.

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