NASA will hold a pair of science briefings tomorrow (Thursday) to debut new findings about the Moon and Mars.

• 2:00 pm EDT, NASA Headquarters. Briefing on findings from international and national lunar probes, especially the Moon Mineralogy Mapper, a NASA instrument on India’s Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter. This event will be shown on NASA Television.
• 3:00 pm EDT (noon PDT), JPL. Briefing on new findings from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This is audio only. To listen to the audio, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio.

In other space science news, the Messenger spacecraft is poised to make its third and final loop around Mercury on September 29. The pass will provide a “gravity assist” to the spacecraft, positioning it to enter orbit around Mercury in 2011. This will be the first spacecraft to orbit that planet, which is closest to the Sun.

President Obama has announced his intention to nominate Elizabeth “Beth” Robinson to be NASA’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Dr. Robinson is currently Assistant Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). She also has worked at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), as a professional staff member of the House Science Committee, and at the former Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). She has a Ph.D. in geophysics from MIT.

With the release of the Augustine committee report, PolitiFact.com has added three more space program promises by President Obama to the category of “In the Works”: Support Human Mission to the Moon by 2020, Work with International Allies on the Space Station; and Speed Up the Development of the Next Generation Space Vehicle.

PolitiFact.com is tracking 18 space program promises made by the President during his campaign. To date, 10 are listed as “no action,” three as “kept,” and five as “in the works.”

A SpacePolicyOnline.com summary of the September 16, 2009 Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee’s Subcommittee on Science and Space hearing on the Augustine committee report is now available. Look on our left menu under “Our Hearing Summaries” or just click here. The Augustine committee was tasked with assessing options for the future of the human space flight program.

A SpacePolicyOnline.com summary of the House Science and Technology Committee’s hearing on the same topic the previous day is also available from our left menu.

NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver reined in expectations that the Obama Administration might significantly increase the NASA budget, according to Space News. Garver spoke at AIAA’s Space 2009 conference in Pasadena on September 16.

The newspaper quoted Ms. Garver as saying that budgets were tight when she previously was at NASA (in the late 1990s) and they are tighter now and that “Our budget has to compete with not only other scientific programs but all government service. To earn our trust from taxpayers we have to help create a better future through programs aligned with both the short-term and long-term national interest.”

Space News also quoted Space Operations Mission Directorate Deputy Administrator David Radzanowski with a similarly pessimistic message: ” I really don’t expect there to be significant increases in NASA’s budgets over the next 10 years…We need to think about what it means to potentially be operating under a flat budget.

A SpacePolicyOnline.com summary of the September 15, 2009 House Science and Technology Committee’s hearing on the Augustine committee report is now available. Look on our left menu under “Our Hearing Summaries” or just click here. The Augustine committee was tasked with assessing options for the future of the human space flight program.

A SpacePolicyOnline.com summary of the Senate Commerce Committee’s hearing on the same topic the next day is also available from our left menu.