NASA will announce on Monday the winners in the agency’s Technology Demonstration Mission program.

NASA’s Office of Chief Technologist is selecting proposals for crosscutting technology demonstrations with the potential to infuse high-impact capabilities into NASA’s future space operations missions.

The media teleconference, on August 22, 2011 at 2:00 pm EDT, will be streamed live at http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta yesterday in warning about the impact on national security if the “congressional supercommittee” does not reach agreement.

Panetta, a former congressman and former Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), as well as former Director of Central Intelligence, made his views clear two weeks ago. He and Clinton, a former Senator, are concerned about the poison pill that was included in the debt limit/deficit reduction deal reached earlier this month. The two spoke at National Defense University yesterday.

The deal implemented approximately $1 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years immediately and directed that a 12-person congressional panel — three Democratic Senators and three Democratic Representatives plus three Republican Senators and three Republican Representatives — be established to find another $1.2-1.5 trillion in spending cuts by Thanksgiving. The panel has been dubbed a “supercommittee” in the media. Congress is then supposed to have an up or down vote (i.e., no amendments would be permitted) on the supercommittee’s recommendations by Christmas.

As an incentive for the group to reach agreement, draconian cuts to discretionary spending would automatically take effect if it does not or if Congress fails to pass whatever it recommends. DOD already is shouldering $350 billion of the initial $1 trillion in cuts. It would have to absorb another $500 billion over 10 years if the supercommittee process fails. The remaining cuts would come from other departments and agencies categorized as discretionary spending, including the State Department — and NASA and NOAA.

The two cabinet secretaries emphasized the need for the supercommittee to look at all government spending, including entitlement programs, as well as tax increases, rather than cutting only discretionary spending.

The 12 members of the supercommittee have been named. Political observers in Washington are split on whether those 12 individuals are likely to be able to reach a compromise or not, but many express concern about the tight time schedule they must meet. Legislative committees are due to give their recommendations to the supercommittee by October 14. The supercommittee then must make its recommendations by November 23, with voting completed in the House and Senate by December 23.

Five Senators from Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana wrote a letter to President Obama on Monday complaining about how NASA is using its FY2011 funding for the Space Launch System (SLS).

The Hunstville Times published the letter, which takes issue with how NASA plans to spend FY2011 funds and for not providing a report required by section 309 of the 2010 NASA Authorization Act. NASA submitted a preliminary version of that “section 309” report in January, but has repeatedly delayed sending the final version. NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden told a House committee in July that it may be fall before NASA is ready to officially announce its plans for the new heavy lift launch vehicle required by Congress.

The SLS is meant to be paired with a crew capsule — the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) — to take astronauts beyond low Earth orbit and to serve as a backup to commercial crew systems that NASA is helping the private sector develop to take astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS). NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville is expected to be the lead NASA center working on the SLS.

The letter complains that NASA’s FY2011 operating plan shows the agency moving forward with MPCV and commercial crew, but not expeditiously working on the SLS. Saying that the “misallocation” of SLS funds suggests that the Administration “has no intention of properly using appropriated funds,” the Senators “insist” that the section 309 report be submitted immediately.

The crew of the final space shuttle mission, STS-135, will be on the Comedy Central show The Colbert Report tonight at 11:30 pm EDT.

The show’s star, Stephen Colbert, is a fan of the space program, but mostly a comedian. He mounted a write-in campaign to have the last U.S. space station module named after him when NASA had a naming contest. He won, but NASA overrode the vote and named it Tranquillity. Instead, they named a piece of exercise equipment on the space station after him, the Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT).

NASA named astronaut Terrence “Terry” Wilcutt as its new chief of safety and mission assurance today.

Wilcutt will replace former astronaut Bryan O’Connor who announced his retirement weeks ago. Wilcutt assumes the post on August 31. He flew on four shuttle missions, two as pilot and two as commander. Most recently he has been the manager of safety and mission assurance for the space shuttle program at Johnson Space Center.

NASA will hold a press briefing on Thursday concerning new information about space weather.

The briefing is scheduled for 2:00 pm EDT at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. The information is from the agency’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory — STEREO — and other NASA probes.

Space weather is a term used to describe the effects on Earth of events on the Sun like solar flares. NASA’s Heliophysics Division in the Science Mission Directorate is in charge of studying these solar-terrestrial interactions. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Weather Service issues space weather predictions and warnings as it does for terrestrial weather since storms on the Sun can have dramatic effects on everything from satellites orbiting the Earth (including GPS and communications satellites on which people are increasingly dependent) to terrestrial electric power grids.

Speakers from NASA, NOAA, the Southwest Research Institute and Boston College will participate in the press conference. It will be broadcast on NASA TV.

NASA announced today that Doug Cooke, Associate Administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, will retire on October 3.

Cooke had said several months ago that he would retire after his organization merged with the Space Operations Mission Directorate (SOMD). NASA announced the merger of those two headquarters components last week.

Cooke’s career at NASA spans 38 years. He worked on the space shuttle, International Space Station, and exploration programs. Bill Gerstenmaier, who headed SOMD, will be in charge of the new combined Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Mission Directorate.

UPDATE: NASA’s space weather press conference on Thursday has been added.

Hope all of you are enjoying your summer vacations. Here are the events we know of that are happening this week related to space policy.

Monday-Wednesday, August 15-17

• NASA IT Summit 2011, San Francisco Marriottt Marquis, San Francisco,

Monday-Thursday, August 15-18

• Space and Missile Defense Conference. Huntsville, AL

Thursday, August 18

• NASA press conference on space weather, NASA Headquarters, 2:00 pm EDT (watch on NASA TV)