The heads of the International Space Station (ISS) agencies from Canada, Europe, Japan, Russia and the United States met at European Space Agency (ESA) Headquarters in Paris on July 17, 2008, to review ISS cooperation. As part of their discussions, they noted the significantly expanded capability that the ISS now provides for on-orbit research and technology development activities and as an engineering test bed for flight systems and operations that are critical to future space exploration initiatives. These activities improve the quality of life on Earth by expanding the frontiers of human knowledge.

NASA has assigned the crew for space shuttle mission STS-128. The flight will carry science and storage racks to the International Space Station.

Marine Corps Col. Frederick W. "Rick" Sturckow will command space shuttle Atlantis on the STS-128 mission, targeted for launch July 30, 2009. Retired Air Force Col. Kevin A. Ford will serve as the pilot. Mission specialists are NASA astronauts John D. "Danny" Olivas, retired Army Col. Patrick G. Forrester, Jose M. Hernandez and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Christer Fuglesang. The mission will deliver a new station crew member, Nicole Stott, to the complex and return Tim Kopra to Earth. Ford, Hernandez and Stott will be making their first trips to space. Stott and Kopra were previously assigned in February to station missions.

Two Russian spacewalkers installed a docking target and changed out science experiments during their second career spacewalk on Tuesday outside the International Space Station.

The almost six-hour spacewalk began on schedule at 1:08 p.m. EDT (1708 GMT) and allowed space station commander Sergei Volkov and flight engineer Oleg Kononenko to finish their tasks on time â€" despite an added, impromptu fix to a disabled ham radio antenna.

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/080715-spacewalk-wrap.html

Is the APRS beacon on the ISS operational? The AMSAT site says that it is. But during a recent pass the only packets I heard were my own, and transmissions from a nearby school.