Billie Deason June 10, 1993

RELEASE NO. 93-041

STS-60 CREW TO DEMONSTRATE WAKE SHIELD FACILITY HARDWARE

Four crew members and the backup mission specialist assigned to Shuttle mission STS-60, scheduled for December 1993, will demonstrate training procedures for deploying and operating the Wake Shield Facility payload on Tuesday, June 15, 1993, between 4:15 p.m. and 5 p.m. CDT. Participants in this event will be Mission Commander Charles Bolden, Mission Specialists Franklin Chang-Diaz, Ron Sega, Sergei Krikalev and backup Mission Specialist Vladimir Titov. The demonstration will take place at the Precision Aerospace Manufacturing Company (PAMCO) facility, 12610 Old Galveston Rd., near Ellington Field. The telephone number at PAMCO is 488-6460.

Between 3:30 p.m. and 4:15 p.m. CDT, there will be a photo opportunity with the Wake Shield Facility flight hardware located inside a "clean" room. Therefore, interested photographers should arrive by 3 p.m. to have their equipment cleaned and to put on the required clothing before entering the area.

The Wake Shield Facility, which will be deployed and retrieved during the STS-60 mission, will test the creation of an ultra-vacuum in which to produce extremely pure thin film crystals for industrial uses ranging from microelectronics to lasers and superconductivity. The WSF is the first primary Shuttle payload completely manufactured and managed in Houston. Space Industries, Inc., built the hardware for the University of Houston Space Vacuum Epitaxy Center.

Media desiring to participate in the photo opportunity and the demonstration should contact Billie Deason at 713-483-5111 or Marisa Hurst, University of Houston Media Relations, at 713-743-8154 no later than 11 a.m. CDT, Tuesday, June 15, 1993.

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