The Hill newspaper reports that the House may interrupt its summer recess and reconvene briefly, perhaps early next week, to pass a bill that would provide funds to states to avoid teacher layoffs.

A new report sponsored by the Secure World Foundation (SWF) and published by George Washington University's Space Policy Institute provides an interesting comparison of the formation and operation of the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and today's need for multinational Space Situational Awareness (SSA). 

NASA has set Friday, August 6, as the day for the first of two spacewalks to fix a broken ammonia pump for one of the  two International Space Station's cooling loops.   As reported earlier, the pump blew a circuit breaker on the station Saturday night and it could not be reset.    Doug Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson were preparing for a spacewalk on Thursday already for an unrelated task and now will shift their attention to solving this problem instead.