Brian Dunbar
  Headquarters, Washington, D.C.                   February 7, 1991
  (Phone:  202/453-1547)
  
  Jerry Berg
  Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
  (Phone:  205/544-6540)
  
  
  RELEASE:  91-22
  
  ADDITIONAL CRRES RELEASES PLANNED FOR FEBRUARY
  
  
       NASA will continue a successful January series of space physics 
  experiments with two chemical releases in February from the Combined 
  Release and Radiation Effects Satellite (CRRES), a joint NASA-U.S. Air 
  Force mission to study the Earth's magnetic fields and the effect of 
  space radiation on spacecraft components.
  
       Through the CRRES program's artificial cloud-release experiments, 
  scientists seek to understand the processes which cause auroras by 
  using charged-particle clouds to induce them and to study the Earth's 
  ionosphere and magnetosphere.
  
       As with six chemical-release experiments in January, the February 
  releases may be visible from the entire continental United States and 
  parts of Canada, Central America, the Caribbean, Western Europe and 
  Western Africa.  These releases will be the last conducted at high-
  enough altitudes for wide visibility.
  
       There will be five opportunities to make the two releases, one of 
  barium and one of lithium, on the nights of Feb. 9, 11, 13 and 16 and 
  the morning of Feb. 19, with multiple release opportunities each 
  evening.  All dates refer to EST.  Releases can be seen in the sky 
  generally 40 to 60 degrees east of the constellation Orion.  
  
       The CRRES program is a joint effort of NASA, through its Marshall 
  Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., and the Department of Defense's 
  Air Force Space Test and Transportation Program.  The releases are 
  commanded from a ground facility at Sunnyvale, Calif.
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       For more current information on the times of release 
  opportunities, the CRRES Coordination Center "hotline" message is 
  available by calling 205/544-5356.
  
                                  - end -
  
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