NASA Daily News Summary
For Release: Jan. 7, 2000
Media Advisory m00-005


SUMMARY:


MARS PROGRAM INDEPENDENT ASSESSMENT TEAM NAMED



Video:

Video File for Jan. 7, 2000


ITEM 1 - TIME LAPSE MOVIE OF MARS FROM Y2K--------------TRT  1:04

This time lapse movie was taken on January 1, 2000.  It shows the 
motion of the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft above the Martian 
surface at 15 times the speed it would pass under you if you were 
really there.  The bright, whitish-pink surfaces show the Martian 
south polar cap. Video Courtesy of NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory 
and Malin Space Science
Systems.

Contact at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, CA Mary Hardin (818-354-
5011)
Contact at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC:  Doug Isbell (Phone
202/358-1753).


ITEM 2 - STAR FORMATION BUBBLES-UP IN NEARBY GALAXY (replay)




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MARS PROGRAM INDEPENDENT ASSESSMENT TEAM NAMED

Seventeen experienced engineers, scientists and executives have 
been named by NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin to form the Mars 
Program Independent Assessment Team.  Chaired by Thomas Young, 
retired executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Corp., this 
team has been chartered to review the agency's approach to robotic 
exploration of Mars in the wake of the recent loss of the Mars 
Polar Lander mission.  The team will evaluate several recent 
successful and unsuccessful NASA missions to deep space.  The team 
will hold its initial organizational meeting on Friday, January 7, 
at NASA Headquarters.  The team will brief the NASA administrator 
on its findings by mid-March 2000.

Contact at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC:  Doug Isbell (Phone 
202/358-1753).

For full text, see:
ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/2000/00-006.txt 


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If NASA issues any news releases later today, we will e-
mail summaries and Internet URLs to this list.

Index of 2000 NASA News Releases:
http://www.nasa.gov/releases/2000/index.html

Index of 1999 NASA News Releases:
http://www.nasa.gov/releases/1999/index.html


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Video File for Jan. 7, 2000

ITEM 2 - STAR FORMATION BUBBLES-UP IN---------------------TRT  :15
         NEARBY GALAXY (replay)

Newly released images obtained with NASA'S Hubble Space Telescope 
show clusters of newly forming stars in various stages of 
evolution.  The images, taken in July 1997 with Hubble's Wide 
Field Planetary Camera 2, capture the "nearby" galaxy NGC 4214--
only 13 million light-years from Earth.  As hot, young stars 
develop, they blow bubbles in the stellar gas, such as the bluish 
heart-shaped bubble in the center of this image.  Hundreds of 
massive blue stars, each more than 10,000 times brighter than the 
Sun, inflated by stellar winds and radiation pressure, expand the 
bubble as the most massive stars in the center reach the ends of 
their lives and explode as supernovae. 

Contact at Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD:  Ray 
Villard (Phone 410/338-4707).
Contact at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC:  Doug Isbell (Phone 
202/358-1753).





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Contract Awards

Contract awards are posted to the NASA Acquisition information 
Service Web site: http://procurement.nasa.gov/EPS/award.html


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end of daily news summary