Michael Braukus
Headquarters, Washington, DC                     November 12, 1997
(Phone:  202/358-1979)

RELEASE:  97-261

NASA AWARDS MICROGRAVITY RESEARCH GRANTS

          NASA has selected 26 researchers to receive grants 
totaling more than $6 million over five years for fundamental 
physics research in microgravity.
 
          Sponsored by NASA's Office of Life and Microgravity 
Science and Applications, Washington, DC, the objective of the 
fundamental physics in microgravity research program is to test 
clearly posed hypotheses to increase the understanding of basic 
physics and the role of gravity in nature's processes.  Increasing 
knowledge of fundamental physics will expand our understanding of 
space, time and matter and may provide the foundation for new 
technology advances.

          Twenty of the grants are for ground-based research, 
while the remaining six are for flight definition projects.  Eight 
of these grants are for continuation of work currently being 
funded by NASA; the remaining proposals represent new research 
efforts.

          NASA received 86 proposals in response to this research 
announcement.  These proposals were each peer reviewed by 
scientific and technical experts from academia and government.  In 
addition, proposals selected for flight definition were reviewed 
in terms of engineering feasibility by a team from NASA's Jet 
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA.

          The list of the grant recipients is available by calling 
the NASA Headquarters Newsroom at 202/358-1600 or via the Internet 
at URL:

ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/1997/97-261a.txt

                       - end -