As part of an ongoing effort to spread the benefits of government investment in space exploration and science, NASA is looking for outside partners to collaborate on “mutually beneficial” space projects. A synopsis published July 17 offers NASA spaceflight expertise to companies and nonprofit organizations willing to work with the agency in unfunded partnerships that can use that expertise to further their goals in space.

Estimated 1-1.5 liters of water leaked in unprecedented incident

AEHF CHECKOUT: Technicians at Cape Canaveral will spend the next several months preparing the third Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF-3) military communications satellite, after the U.S. Air Force and manufacturer Lockheed Martin Space Systems delivered it with a C-5 Galaxy flying out of Travis AFB, Calif. Launch from Complex 41 on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V is scheduled for this fall.

Democratic-led appropriators in the Senate are on a collision course with counterparts in the Republican-controlled House over spending for NASA, with the Senate Appropriations Committee this week set to approve $18 billion for next fiscal year for the space and aeronautics agency.

Some of the first confirmed program sacrifices emerging

HOUSTON — NASA is looking into a possible cooling system leak after water seeped into the helmet of spacewalking European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano on July 16, prompting an early end to a two-man excursion that was to advance preparations for the arrival of Russia’s Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MLM) later this year. Neither Parmitano nor lead U.S. spacewalker Chris Cassidy faced imminent danger, and all of the missed tasks can be rescheduled without urgency, according to NASA’s Mission Control.

GLASGOW, Scotland — The U.K. government will invest £60 million ($90 million) to advance cutting-edge propulsion technology in development at Reaction Engines Ltd (REL), a U.K.-based technology company that is building a radical new motor designed to power a reusable space vehicle. The new investment targets continued work on REL’s Synergistic Air-Breathing Rocket (Sabre), which uses lightweight heat exchangers to chill the incoming airstream from more than 1,000C to minus 150C in less than 1/100th of a second.

ROCKET TEST: Engineers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center have tested a rocket engine injector made with additive manufacturing (AM), the 3D printing process that allows complex shapes to be crafted at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional machining. Aerojet Rocketdyne produced the injector assembly, which fired liquid oxygen and gaseous hydrogen in the test series, using high-energy lasers to melt metallic powder in a buildup process.