From: yee@trident.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee)
Subject: NASA Daily News for 10/05/92 (Forwarded)
Apparently-To: sci-space-news@ames.arc.nasa.gov
Followup-To: sci.space
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 23:17:36 GMT

Daily                 News
Monday, October 5, 1992  24-hour audio service at 202/755-1788

 % STS-52 Flight Readiness Review to be held tomorrow at Kennedy;
 % Hubble scientists report on new studies of Jupiter's sulfur moon Io;
 % PBS to air new series on "Space Age," beginning next Monday, Oct. 12;
 % NASA to begin search of nearby & distant stars for signs of intelligence.

The formal Flight Readiness Review for the STS-52 nine-day science and
engineering mission will be held tomorrow, October 6, at the Kennedy
Space Center.  The mission is tentatively targeted for a launch on
Thursday, Oct. 22.  The Office of Space Flight will issue a firm launch
target date at the conclusion of tomorrow's review.  This flight will
be Columbia's 13th mission and the 51st for the shuttle system.

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

Scientists working with three of the Hubble Space Telescope's
instruments have announced that the Jupiter moon Io has a smaller
atmosphere than had been previously believed.  The observations show
that Io's atmosphere, which had been considered to extend out to five
times the moon's diameter, is only one-and-a-half times the moon's
diameter.  The scientists, working with images and data from the Faint
Object Camera, Faint Object Spectrograph, and Wide Field/Planetary
Camera, report that Io's atmosphere may be patchy, with very dense
regions having 1000 times the pressure of adjoining regions.  Likely
sources for the atmosphere are sulfur dioxide being spewed from the
volcanoes, and evaporation or sputtering of surface sulfur-dioxide
frost.

The moon's atmosphere feeds material into a giant torus encircling
Jupiter at the distance of the moon's orbit.  Sulfur from Io's volcanic
plumes cannot escape directly from the surface into the torus, but the
scientists believe the moon's atmosphere and torus are interacting in
such a way that sulfur and oxygen atoms are stripped from Io's
atmosphere to feed Jupiter's plasma torus.  Io is the solar system's
most dynamic moon and the Hubble investigators are continuing in their
analysis and observations of these phenomena.

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

Beginning next Monday, October 12, the Public Broadcasting System will
air a new weekly series - "Space Age " - which documents the first
steps of humans into space.  The program is in six parts, with each
segment covering a specific aspect of space exploration.  The first
episode, "Quest for Planet Mars," delves into the ages-old dream of
exploring the Red Planet.  The programs commemorate the International
Space Year and include extensive supporting materials for educational
and public outreach activities.  WQED, Pittsburgh, is the series
producer, with Japan's NHK, Sweden's SVT-1, and the Dutch TROS networks
as co-producers.  The series was produced in association with the
National Academy of Sciences, which provided scientific oversight.

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

Also next Monday, NASA will begin the most comprehensive search ever
conducted for evidence of intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe.
The search will begin at California's  Goldstone Deep Space Network
station and also at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.  The
project, the High Resolution Microwave Survey, consists of two parts -
the Targeted Search, which will use the National Astronomy and
Ionosphere Center's huge dish at Arecibo, and the Sky Survey, which
will use the 34-meter dish at Goldstone.  The searches will use radio
telescope antennas to "listen" to stars for non-random radio noise -
much like someone tuning a radio listens for a station between the
static.  The Targeted Search will be searching about 1,000 nearby stars
similar to our Sun; the Sky Survey will survey the entire sky.  The
radio telescope signals will be fed to highly sophisticated signal
analyzer systems which can scan frequencies from 1,000 to 10,000
megaHertz in seconds.  The program is managed by the Ames Research
Center for NASA's Solar System Exploration Division.

  
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.

Monday, October 5, 1992
Live   12:00 pm  NASA Today news program, today featuring a report on the
                 upcoming STS-52 mission; a report on the Total Ozone Mapping
		 Spectrometer's discovery of the largest ozone hole yet over
		 the Antarctic; a report on lightning studies which have been 
                 conducted using balloons; a medical technology spinoff from
		 the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's computer image enhancement
		 group; and a look back at the career of the newest inductee
		 to the Aerospace Walk of Honor - Joe Engle.
       12:15 pm  Age of Space Transportation.
       12:30 pm  Preparation of Food in Space.
        1:00 pm  Apollo 8 - Go for Trans-Lunar Injection.
        1:30 pm  From Gondola to Manned Space Flight.
        2:00 pm  Launch Box program #1 - Specacular Space Suit.
        2:30 pm  Birth of NASA.
        3:00 pm  Total Quality Management program #40 - 
                 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.
Newsgroups: sci.space.news