Daily                News
Wednesday, July 15, 1992  24-hour audio service at 202/755-1788

 % New very-high-altitude research aircraft being built, to fly next year;
 % Hubble Telescope scientists find evidence to support 15-year-old theory;
 % Compton Observatory scientists discover unexpected gamma ray afterglow;
 % STS-50 record-setting crew will hold post-flight conference next Monday,
   July 20;
 % KSC payload integrators mate Geotail to its Delta 2 launch vehicle;
 % Goddard reports development of GOES-I, GOES- J going well and on time;
 % Kennedy Center extends Lockheed processing contract through Fall 1995.

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

NASA's Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology announced that work
has begun on the construction of a very-high-altitude unpiloted
research aircraft which NASA will use to measure ozone levels and other
atmospheric conditions.  The aircraft is being manufactured under a
$2.25 million contract by Aurora Flight Sciences Corp., Manassas,
Virginia, and is made of lightweight composite materials such as
graphite and Kevlar.

The Perseus aircraft is viewed as the first step in the general use of
advanced aircraft for many aspects of Earth science research which are
presently out of the flight regime of other NASA flight platforms such
as the ER-2 high-altitude research aircraft or high-altitude balloons.
The Perseus aircraft, which will have a wingspan of nearly 59 feet and
yet will weigh only 880 pounds, is expected to be able to fly at
altitudes of 82,000 feet with a range of 1,000 miles and a cruising
time of one hour.  The plane will be powered by a liquid- cooled rotary
engine which will run on gasoline and oxygen, diluted by recirculated
exhaust gases.

The Perseus is designed to fly nominal missions using a preprogrammed
flight sequence with onboard inertial systems using Global Positioning
Satellite data and onboard wind sensors to update the aircraft's
autopilot.  The plane also can be flown by ground command much like
previous aircraft have been in the NASA aircraft research program.
Ames Research Center is the flight project management center for the
Perseus, which will begin flight testing late this year at Dryden
Flight Research Facility in California's Mojave Desert.

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

Hubble Space Telescope and Compton Gamma Ray Observatory scientists
will present new findings from the observatories' investigations today
at 1:00 pm EDT in the NASA Headquarters auditorium.  This program will
be shown live on NASA Select television.  The Hubble data will focus on
observations made of a stellar flare that occurred late last year on a
tiny red star.  That flare produced evidence of a powerful beam of
downward- streaming protons which occurred on the star at the beginning
of the flare event.  The Hubble's Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph
instrument recorded ultraviolet spectra characteristic of this event,
which was predicted in 1976 as a possible phenomenon in solar flares.
Solar astronomers have been looking for evidence of this effect for the
past 15 years but could not confirm it until now.  The Solar Maximum
Mission spacecraft was equipped with a spectrograph instrument for such
observations but was limited in its ability to resolve very rapidly
changing flare conditions.  The Goddard spectrograph on the Hubble has
much higher time resolution.

Compton Gamma Ray Observatory observations of our Sun have produced
evidence of a gamma-ray afterglow which persisted for more than 5 hours
following a recent solar flare.  A similar event occurred later which
produced a gamma-ray afterglow lasting 90 minutes.  One theory to
explain this unexpected observation is that the protons produced by a
flare are boosted to high energy levels by the magnetic processes in
the flare eruption and then stored in the magnetic loops much the same
way the Earth's magnetic fields trap electrons in the Van Alleny
Belts.  One difference seems to be that the solar proton storage has a
slow leak which is seen as the "afterglow" by the Compton Observatory.
The investigators believe there is a case for applying knowledge gained
in the Earth's magnetosphere to their studies of this new solar
phenomenon and therefore improve our current understanding of ongoing
solar events.

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

The STS-50 flight crew will hold their post-mission press briefing next
Monday, July 20, at 2:00 pm EDT at the Johnson Space Center.  The
briefing will allow the U.S.  Microgravity Laboratory-1 science and
flight team crewmembers to describe their record-setting 14-day flight
and to present films and videotape of their orbiting laboratory
efforts.  The program will be shown live on NASA Select television.

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

Kennedy Space Center payload integration engineers have mated the
Geotail spacecraft, and its Payload Assist Module-D upper stage, to the
Delta 2 launcher on Pad 17-A at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
Geotail will now undergo a detailed electrical integration checkout.
The processing of the first and second Delta stages is also going
smoothly and the launch remains scheduled for 10:26 am EDT on Friday,
July 24.  The Geotail spacecraft was developed by the Japanese
Institute for Space and Astronautical Sciences as their contribution to
the International Solar Terrestrial Physics Program managed
 by the Goddard Space Flight Center.

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

Goddard Space Flight Center environmental systems engineers report the
Pathfinder (serial number 02) Imager and Sounder instruments have been
integrated into the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-I
and have completed their functional testing program.  The GOES-I
spacecraft remains on a schedule which will support a December 1993
launch.  The GOES-I spacecraft is presently scheduled to begin thermal
vacuum chamber testing at the Palo Alto, Calif., laboratory of Space
Systems/Loral.  Meanwhile the next spacecraft in that series, GOES-J,
has been removed from storage to begin harness modifications to bring
its flight hardware systems up to the full flight status of the GOES-I
spacecraft.  The Pathfinder instruments will be used on GOES-J
beginning in February 1993 to start that spacecraft's integration
process.  Serial number 03 Imager and Sounder instruments are presently
under development at the ITT Fort Wayne, Indiana, plant and are
expected to be completed and tested on a scheduled that would allow for
their integration into the GOES-I spacecraft by April 1993.

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

The Kennedy Space Center has extended for three years its space shuttle
processing contract with Lockheed Space Operations Company of
Titusville.  The 3-year extension is valued at just over $1.83 billion
and runs through September 30, 1995.  The original contract was awarded
to Lockheed in September, 1983 and, including the present 3- year
contract extension, has a 9-year valuation of almost $6.3 billion
dollars.  Lockheed is responsible, under terms of the contract, for
complete processing services at Kennedy, including preparation of the
shuttle orbiters for each mission and operation and maintenance of
related facilities and ground services.

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, July 15, 1992
Live   12:00 pm  NASA Today news program, today featuring a report on the
                 newest research aircraft expected to join NASA's high-altitude
                 fleet; a report about NASA investigations which took place in
		 the Azores last month; a report on the conclusion of
		 underwater studies which may assist in developing procedures
		 for long-term space flights; a goodbye to astronaut John
                 Creighton, who will be returning back to his native Seattle
		 area to work for the Boeing Company; and a review of events
		 which have happened on today's date in NASA's 33-year history.
       12:15 pm  Aerospace Oddities.
       12:30 pm  Gyroscopes in Space.
Live   11:00 pm  Space Astronomy  Update program on recent Hubble Space
                 Telescope and Compton Gamma Ray Observatory discoveries.
        2:00 pm  Launchbox program #3.
        2:30 pm  Four Rooms with an Earth View.
        3:00 pm  Total Quality Management program #5, U.  of New Mexico series.
        4:00 pm  NASA Today and subsequent programming repeats.
        8:00 pm  NASA Today and subsequent programming repeats.
       12:00 am  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.