GREEN FUEL: NASA has picked Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo., to lead an orbital demonstration of a “green” spacecraft propellant alternative to hydrazine. While an efficient and storable propellant, hydrazine is highly corrosive and toxic. The team will develop and fly a high-performance green propellant, demonstrating and proving the performance of the integrated propulsion system. The agency’s Green Propellant Infusion Mission is expected to fly in about three years.

RUSSIAN LOSSES: A botched Russian launch junked two multimillion-dollar satellites last week that were to provide Indonesia and Russia with telecommunication services, adding to a series of failures that have dogged its space industry. Reuters reported that Russia’s space agency acknowledged the Aug. 7 failure of the upper stage of the launcher atop its workhorse Proton rocket. The error after takeoff from the Russian-leased Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan replicates a mishap that scrapped the $265 million Express AM-4 satellite last summer.

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LOS ANGELES — NASA is on track to move the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover for the first time on the red planet’s surface around the middle of next week, according to controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California. Preparations for the move come midway through Sol 9 on Mars (Aug. 14), as the MSL team nears the halfway point in the lengthy process of checking out and commissioning the rover’s 10 major science instruments and other avionics and mechanical systems.

HOUSTON — NASA’s Morpheus team expects to assemble a second test vehicle from spare components and resume tethered test flights at Johnson Space Center by the end of 2012, following the prototype lander’s Aug. 9 crash during an untethered flight attempt at Kennedy Space Center (KSC).

NASA has issued a new call to researchers to flight test an array of space technologies on a variety of platforms ranging from the modified Boeing 727 Zero-G parabolic test aircraft to high-altitude balloons and reusable launch vehicles. The announcement is the fifth made by NASA’s Flight Opportunities program, which aims to develop key space technologies as well as help foster the growth of the reusable launch business. Proposals for the latest call are due by Sept. 21, with an initial announcement on selections possible as early as November.

ISRO is building a third launch pad as it eyes plans to significantly boost its launch tempo