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Amateur astronomers are enjoying a cat-and-mouse game with the US military in keeping track of its secret space plane, the X-37B.
NASA is pushing ahead with work on its new Orion space capsule and Ares rockets despite their ambiguous status as lawmakers discuss the agency's 2011 budget request. http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/08/20/new-nasa-spaceships-forge-uncertain-atmosphere/
The White House is disavowing a plan to have NASA conduct outreach to Muslim countries, but a congressman who talked to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden about that plan last month said the initiative was very real until somebody slammed the brakes on it. The Buzz Aldrin Portal to Science & Space Exploration is on iTunes and the iPhone App store! http://buzzaldrin.com/community/buzzs-iphone-app/
Fyodor Yurchikhin will command the Russian spacecraft, while NASA's Shannon Walker will act as Soyuz Flight Engineer. Doug Wheelock rounds out the crew as FE-2. Wheelock will command Expedition 25 in September. The trio will launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome on a 2-day flight which will arrive at the ISS on Thursday, joining Expedition 24 commander Alexander Skvortsov, cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko and American astronaut Tracy Caldwell-Dyson. Liftoff is scheduled for 5:35PM EDT today (that's 2135 GMT Tuesday, 3:35AM Wednesday local time). Play-by-play at Spaceflight Now. Watch live on NASA TV. NASA has begun to wind down construction of the rockets and spacecraft that were to have taken astronauts back to the Moon — effectively dismantling the US human spaceflight program despite a congressional ban on its doing so. Legislators have accused President Obama’s Administration of contriving to slip the termination of the Constellation program through the back door to avoid a battle on Capitol Hill. The first flight of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is now being targeted for no earlier than Friday, June 4 2010. The window for the test flight remains 1 p.m. to 5 p.m [see update below - TonyF]. Once the final approvals are given and related documentation is completed, the California-based company will be cleared to launch the Falcon 9 from Launch Complex 40 at the Air Force base.
UPDATE 2: Launch delayed, no new time - window extends to 3PM EDT. Check our Twitter for updates.
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UPDATE: Launch window opens at 
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