From: baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov (Ron Baalke)
Subject: NASA Daily News for 11/20/92 (Forwarded)
Followup-To: sci.space
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.3-4   
Reply-To: baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 00:53:14 GMT

Daily                 News
Friday, November 20, 1992  24-hour audio service at 202/755-1788

 % Space flight management sets December 2 as launch date 
                  for STS-53;
 % Third NASA Town Meeting begins today at 1:00 pm from 
                  Indianapolis;
 % DOD payload scheduled for launch aboard Scout from 
                  Vandenberg tomorrow;
 % Best evidence yet for Black Holes presented by team of 
                  Hubble astronomers.

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

Office of Space Flight managers concluded their flight 
readiness review of Discovery's upcoming STS-53 mission 
for the Department of Defense and set December 2 as the 
launch date for the flight.  The launch window for 
Discovery opens at 6:59 am EST on Wednesday, Dec. 2.  
This will be Discovery's 15th flight and its first since 
returning to the fleet following a refurbishment and 
upgrade at Rockwell International's Palmdale, California,
orbiter facility.  

STS-53 is a 7-day mission and will be the last scheduled 
major military flight on a shuttle.  Mission commander 
for the flight is David Walker, who will be making his 
third space flight.  Mission pilot, making his second 
shuttle flight, is Robert Cabana.  Also onboard for the 
mission are veteran mission specialists Guy Bluford and 
James Voss and rookie mission specialist Michael Richard 
Clifford.

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

NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin and other agency 
officials are in Indianapolis today for the third in the 
Town Meeting series of outreach programs to give the 
American public an opportunity to learn about and comment 
on the civil space program.  The forum will begin at 1:00 
pm EST in the University Place Conference Center on the 
grounds of Indianapolis' Indiana-Purdue University Place.  
The forum will follow the style of the previous two Town
Meetings (held in Hartford and Raleigh) with a 
presentation by Administrator Goldin, who will then 
entertain questions from the audience.  This will be 
followed by a presentation from a NASA panel led by 
Assistant Deputy Administrator Charles Bolden.  The panel 
will also take questions from the audience.  The Town 
Meeting will be televised live on NASA Select television.

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

NASA has rescheduled the launch of the Scout rocket 
carrying the Department of Defense Miniature Seeker 
Technology Integration payload for tomorrow, Saturday, 
Nov. 21.  The launch window opens at 8:45 am EST and 
extends one hour until 9:45 am.  The launch will be from 
Space Launch Complex 5 at Vandenberg Air Force Base.  
This is the seventh launch attempt for the rocket.  The 
previous attempts had been scrubbed for range control, 
vehicle power supply or guidance system, or ground 
support equipment problems.

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

NASA and university astronomers yesterday presented the 
first visual data representing the long-hypothesized 
accretion disk associated with the infall of material to 
the center of a Black Hole.  The photo of the disk was 
taken by the Hubble Space Telescope's Planetary Camera 
and is of the core of the galaxy NGC 4261 in the Virgo 
Cluster of galaxies located some 45 million light-years 
from Earth.  Although black holes are still theoretical 
constructs and have not been conclusively proven to 
exist, the astronomy team which presented the new data 
said this is the best evidence yet and contributes to 
mounting proof for the existence of black holes.  The 
Hubble view of the disk of NGC 4261 is complemented by 
radio telescope views which show twin, streaming jets of 
matter spewing at right angles to the plane of the 
accretion diskPanother element in the growing list of 
clues that black holes are real and not just 
hypothetical.

Astronomers and astrophysics researchers are hopeful of 
being able to use spectroscopy to study the motion of the 
gas within a few dozen light-years of the proposed NGC 
4261 black hole following the planned late-1993 servicing 
mission to correct for the aspherical aberration in 
Hubble's primary mirror.  Such spectroscopic studies 
might allow for the final, positive, proof of a black 
hole by accurately measuring the mass, and therefore 
gravity, of the object at the core of the accretion disk.


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.

Friday, November 20, 1992
Live   12:00 pm  NASA Today news program, today 
                  featuring a report on a new way to correct for flaws in 
                  the Hubble Space Telescope's primary mirror; a look at a 
                  computer partner to assist launch control technicians; a
                  look at what turned out to be not quite the baked product 
                  hoped for in an experiment performed on the STS-47 
                  mission this past September; and as usual a look back at 
                  this day in NASA history.
  12:15 pm  Aeronautics & Space Report.
  12:30 pm  Quiet, Fast, Safe, Airplanes.
Live  1:00 pm  NASA Town Meeting from University Place 
                  Conference Center, Indiana-Purdue Universities , 
                  Indianapolis.
  8:00 pm  12:00 midnight PNASA 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.
     ___    _____     ___
    /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|     Ron Baalke         | baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov
    | | | |  __ \ /| | | |     Jet Propulsion Lab |
 ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |__   M/S 525-3684 Telos | Learn to recognize the
/___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | inconsequential, then 
|_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/                     | ignore it.

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