Headline News
Internal Communications Branch (P-2) NASA Headquarters

  Friday, May 10, 1991	Audio Service: 202 / 755-1788

This is NASA Headline News for Friday, May 10, 1991 . . .

NASA yesterday announced the discovery of the first surface 
evidence of a buried impact crater formed by the impact of the 
comet or asteroid which may have caused the extinction of the 
dinosaurs.  The discovery was made by Charles Duller, Ames 
Research Center, and colleagues Kevin Pope, Geo Eco Arc Research, La 
Canada, and Adriana Ocampo, Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  They were 
searching 1987 satellite imagery of Mexico's Yucatan area for water 
sources used by ancient Mayan cities and were able to piece together 
the impact crater evidence from a ring of sink holes.  The ring is more 
than 125 miles in diameter.  These findings, published in the 
current issue of Nature, agree with other geologic and magnetic 
data suggesting a buried crater.  A core sample taken from nearby 
exploratory oil wells and analyzed by Pope and Ocampo showed the 
floor of the crater to date back 65 million years -- to the Late 
Cretaceous period.  The boundary between the Late Cretaceous period 
and the subsequent, Tertiary, period is the location of enriched 
deposits of iridium, a metal more abundant in comets and asteroids 
than in Earth's crust.  The NASA team also reports that a large impact 
to the Earth in the vicinity of the Yucatan, close to the equator, would 
have profoundly affected global climatic conditions.

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The STS-40 flight readiness review will be held Monday and 
Tuesday, May 13 and 14, at the Kennedy Space Center.  Currently, 
Columbia, with the Spacelab Life Sciences habitable module installed 
inside its payload bay, is sitting on launch pad 39-B and undergoing 
final closeout preparations.  Ordnance installation will begin this 
weekend.  The flight director and astronaut press briefings will be held 
Tuesday, May 14.  On Wednesday, May 15, the mission scientists and 
program managers will hold the life sciences press briefing.

The Tracking and Data Relay Satellite-E , scheduled for launch 
aboard Atlantis on STS-43, was mated to its Inertial Upper Stage 
yesterday.  That mission is currently slated for launch sometime 
during July-August this summer.

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Launch of the NOAA-D spacecraft is tentatively set for 11:52 am 
EDT, Tuesday, May 14, aboard an Atlas-E launch vehicle from 
Vandenberg Air Force Base.  The NOAA-D carries five primary 
instruments, including the Advanced Very High Resolution 
Radiometer, and is a cooperative program between NASA, the National 
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the United Kingdom, 
Canada and France.  NOAA-D will be placed into a 522-mile-high 
orbit inclined 98.7 degrees to the equator.  The spacecraft, a 
General Electric TIROS-N class satellite, will provide day and night 
environmental data to all of the cooperating partners.

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Ames Research Center's education officials were quite busy last 
month.  They hosted a Hubble Space Telescope symposium for 110 Bay 
Area teachers from six counties; they helped manage the Santa 
Clara Valley science and engineering fair for the 638 student 
participants; and they joined others in participating in the Oakland 
school district's science and technology fair for 1,700 students and 
teachers.  They also visited 75 schools in other areas of California, and 
in Washington, Montana and Utah; and met with the Oregon state 
Aerospace Advisory Committee to plan the 1991-1992 teacher-
student aerospace programs.

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NASA will hold its second annual Symposium on Industrial 
Involvement and Success in Commercial Space Tuesday, May 
14, at the Hotel Washington in downtown Washington.  The all-day, 
one-day conference is sponsored by the Office of Commercial Programs 
and provides an overview of the agency's commercial space activities.

	
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.

Tuesday, 5/14/91
	11:52 am	NOAA-D launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base. LIVE 

	2:30 pm	STS-40 mission overview press briefing with lead flight 
          director Al Pennington, from Johnson Space Center. LIVE 

	3:30 pm	STS-40 astronaut crew press briefing, from JSC.  LIVE 

Wednesday, 5/15/91
	10:00 am	STS-40 mission science and life science experiment press 
          briefings from Johnson and Kennedy Space Centers. LIVE 

	1:15 pm	Magellan-at-Venus final status report, from Jet Propulsion 
          Laboratory.  Magellan will have completed one full mapping 
          cycle of the planet. LIVE 

	
This report is filed daily at noon, Monday through Friday.  It is a service of 
NASA's Office of Public Affairs.  The contact 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 is offset 6.8 MHz, 
polarization is vertical.