PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
Contact: Diane Ainsworth
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                       September 19, 1995
NASA CHARTS COURSE FOR FIRST NEW MILLENNIUM FLIGHT
     NASA officials have confirmed the basic mission profile and 
technology plan for the first launch in the agency's New 
Millennium program, and selected the mission's primary industrial 
partner and its team leader.
     The first of three deep space missions to be flown by the 
year 2000 under the New Millennium technology validation effort 
will feature a 1998 launch of a small spacecraft destined for a 
flyby of an asteroid and a comet.
     Spectrum Astro, Inc., of Gilbert, AZ, has been selected as 
the primary industrial partner on the first mission team, which 
will be led by David Lehman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory 
(JPL), Pasadena, CA.  Lehman most recently served as technical 
manager of the attitude and information management subsystem on 
the Mars Pathfinder, a NASA Discovery program mission due for 
launch in December 1996.
     Final decisions on the details of the first New Millennium 
mission -- such as its exact launch date and the target asteroid 
and comet to be visited -- will be made following several weeks 
of intense systems design work by the mission team, due to begin 
in early October.
     The proposed 220-pound spacecraft will demonstrate a variety 
of advanced
technologies that help enable many ambitious deep space and 
Earth-orbiting missions envisioned by NASA for flight early in 
the next century. The spacecraft will also be the first to rely 
on solar electric propulsion for its main source of thrust, 
rather than conventional solid or liquid propellant-based 
systems.
     Technologies likely to be demonstrated on this first flight 
include a miniaturized deep space antenna and related 
telecommunications equipment, advanced solar arrays and lithium 
ion spacecraft batteries, and low-mass spacecraft structures.  
The spacecraft's science instrument payload will include a 
miniaturized imaging spectrometer that will make chemical maps of 
the target asteroid and comet.  New mission operations techniques 
will give the spacecraft independent decision-making abilities 
that are unprecedented 
for such a deep space mission.
     "These technologies represent significant leaps over the 
existing state of the art for deep space vehicles," said Kane 
Casani, New Millennium program manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion 
Laboratory.  "We'll have a very capable yet very advanced flight 
computer as well as a prototype multispectral science instrument 
that is at most 1/10th of the mass of similar instruments on the 
Voyager probes. The autonomous navigation capabilities will 
deliver performance equivalent to sailing a ship across the 
Atlantic Ocean hands-free while arriving at the port in Europe a 
few steps away from the dock."
     The propulsion-related technology for the mission is 
currently under development by two separate programs run by NASA 
and the U.S. Air Force Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.  
The first New Millennium spacecraft will serve as the host for 
this hardware.
     Thrust during the mission will be generated by one 11.8-inch 
diameter "ion-drive" thruster, which expels a high-velocity beam 
of Xenon gas from the spacecraft that has been ionized using the 
electricity produced by the solar arrays.  Ion-drive systems are 
much more efficient than chemical propulsion systems, which 
typically require two or more chemical propellants for fuel and 
oxidizer.  Smaller versions of such thrusters have been used 
occasionally on Earth-orbiting satellites for adjusting 
spacecraft attitude or executing small orbit changes, but no 
space vehicle has yet employed solar electric propulsion as its 
primary means of thrust.
     "This idea has been around for decades, and the dramatic 
benefits of ion propulsion for a wide variety of deep space 
missions are well known, but NASA science mission managers have 
never felt that the technology was mature enough to be used for 
the first time on their mission," Casani said.  "With important 
contributions from other technology development programs, New 
Millennium will take on this challenge and bring full-scale solar 
electric propulsion out of the lab and into space once and for 
all."
     Depending on the launch date, the primary asteroid and comet 
flyby mission will last 12 to 18 months.  "Spacecraft health 
permitting, an extended mission of one to two years should be 
possible, allowing the spacecraft to pass by one or more 
additional small bodies in the solar system," said Rex Ridenoure, 
New Millennium program architect at JPL.
     The New Millennium program is managed by the Jet Propulsion 
Laboratory for NASA's Offices of Space Science, Space Access and 
Technology and Office of Mission to Planet Earth, Washington, 
D.C.
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9/19/95 DEA
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