Daily                 News
Wednesday, November 18, 1992  24-hour audio service at 202/755-1788

 % Discovery work at Pad 39-A continues; payload to be installed tomorrow; 
 % Advanced Communications Satellite Workshop opens today in Washington;
 % NASA completes negotiations with McDonnell Douglas for Spacelab support;
 % Hubble briefing tomorrow to feature photo of Black Hole accretion disk;
 % October was busy month for Marshall and Ames education specialists.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Preparations for the December launch of Discovery for the STS-53
Department of Defense mission are continuing at Kennedy Space Center's
Launch Pad 39-A.  The orbiter and associated stack components will be
powered up today and the KSC crew will begin aft orbiter compartment
and solid rocket booster closeouts later this afternoon.  A minor
concern cropped up during the hot-fire test of the orbiter's hydraulic
auxiliary power units, which showed APU #1 to have a higher than
acceptable fuel-inlet pressure reading.  A change-out of the unit is
under consideration, which could be accomplished in existing
contingency time associated with Discovery's remaining launch
preparations.  Otherwise there appear to be no concerns.  The DOD
payload will be installed in Discovery's payload bay tomorrow.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Today and tomorrow at the Sheraton Washington Hotel NASA will co-host a
conference on the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite.  Other
conference co-hosts are Comsat Laboratories, the Harris Corporation,
and MITRE Corp.  The satellite is scheduled for launch aboard a shuttle
flight scheduled for launch in mid-1993.  It was developed by NASA in
cooperation with the American satellite communications industry to
support future high- risk communications needs which fell outside the
sponsorship capabilities of the private sector and reflects a
three-decade long history of such technology development by NASA.  The
conference will feature representatives from Rockwell International,
Motorola, the National Telecommunications and Information
Administration, the U.S. Army Space Command, and Georgetown
University.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

NASA and McDonnell Douglas have completed negotiation of a
cost-plus-award-fee contract worth $163 million to provide continuation
of Spacelab integration activities at contractor and agency facilities
at both the Marshall and Kennedy Space Centers.  The contract has
provisions for four 1-year extensions of between $27 and 34 million.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

This Thursday, Nov. 19, at 1:00 pm EST in the NASA Headquarters
auditorium, Dr. Walter Jaffee, Leiden Observatory in The Netherlands,
and other astronomers, will present the first image taken of a giant
dust disk surrounding a suspected black hole.  The image, acquired by
the Hubble Space Telescope, clearly shows the saucer- like disk and is
the first visual view of the phenomenon of galactic accretion long
linked with black holes but previously never seen.  In addition to Dr.
Jaffee, NASA astronomer Steve Maran, University of Washington astronomy
professor Bruce Margon and Pennsylvania State University astronomy
professor Daniel Weedman will discuss the significance of this new
Hubble finding.  The briefing will be shown live on NASA Select
television.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Education specialists at NASA centers report a busy October of school
presentations, student science fairs and Space- and Aero-mobile tours.
At Marshall, their three Spacemobile lecturers visited 45 schools and
conducted a total of nearly 200 presentations reaching over 21,000
students.  At Ames Research Center, educators visited 60 schools in the
Pacific Northwest including two special teacher workshops held in
Alaska.  Marshall also reports the center's Space Station Freedom
trailer exhibit has played to large and enthusiastic crowds in the
Hartford area, where they were set up last week to support the NASA
Town Meeting held there yesterday.  The trailers were set up in West
Hartford at the Science Museum of Connecticut, where more than 3,500
visitors toured through the space station mockups daily.  Local
Hartford electronic media also used the trailers as the site for
phone-in radio shows and television reports of local citizen reaction.
The trailers are being moved to Indianapolis for the next town meeting
there on Friday, Nov. 20.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Here's the broadcast schedule for Public Affairs events on NASA Select
TV.  Note that all events and times may change without notice, and that
all times listed are Eastern.  Live indicates a program is transmitted
live.

Wednesday, November 18, 1992
Live   12:00 pm  NASA Today news program, today 
                 featuring a report on yesterday's NASA Town Meeting at 
                 the University of Hartford in Connecticut; a report from 
                 the Marshall Space Flight Center about their work on the 
                 Advanced Solid Rocket Motor; a look at what is being done 
                 to help investigators find a downed aircraft and be able 
                 to track the "black box" even if the box falls into deep 
                 water; a peek into the world of supercomputers and a new 
                 project just initiated between supercomputer maker Cray 
                 Research and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory; and as usual, 
                 a look back at today's date in NASA History.
       12:15 pm  Aeronautics & Space Report.
       12:30 pm  Sail on Voyager.
        1:30 pm  Space Navigation.
        2:00 pm  Starfinder program #1.
        2:30 pm  Life in the Universe.
        3:00 pm  Total Quality Management program #69 from 
                  the University of New Mexico series.
        4:00 pm  8:00 pm and 12:00 midnight - NASA Today
                  and subsequent programming repeats.

This report is filed daily at noon, Monday through Friday.  It is a
service of NASA's Office of Public Affairs.  The editor is Charles
Redmond, 202/453-8425 or CREDMOND on NASAmail.  NASA Select TV is
carried on GE Satcom F2R, transponder 13, C-Band, 72 degrees West
Longitude, transponder frequency is 3960 MegaHertz, audio subcarrier is
6.8 MHz, polarization is vertical.