NASA Daily News Summary
For Release: March 30, 1999
Media Advisory m99-062

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Summary

-- Upcoming Media Event: Landsat 7 Briefing
-- Video File for March 30

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There are no news releases scheduled for March 30, 1999.

If NASA issues any news releases later today, we will 
e-mail summaries and Internet URLs to this list.

Index of 1999 NASA News Releases:
     http://www.nasa.gov/releases/1999/index.html

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Upcoming Media Event: Landsat 7 Briefing

     Reviewing 27 years of environmental discovery and 
previewing new ways of looking at our world, NASA and the 
U.S. Geological Survey will brief reporters March 31 on the 
April launch of Landsat 7. Landsat 7 will gather data from 
Earth's land surface and surrounding coastal regions. 
Analysis of the data will provide scientists with new 
information on deforestation, receding glaciers and crop 
monitoring. The spacecraft is scheduled for launch on 
April 15 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA. The briefing 
will be held at 1 p.m. EST March 31 in the James E. Webb 
Memorial Auditorium at NASA Headquarters, 300 E St., SW, 
Washington, DC. The briefing will be carried live on NASA TV 
with two-way question-and-answer capability for reporters at 
NASA centers. 

Contact at Headquarters: David E. Steitz, 202/358-1730;
Contact at Goddard Space Flight Center: Lynn Chandler, 
301/614-5562;
Contact at U.S. Geological Survey: Catherine Watson, 703/648-
4732.

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VIDEO FILE FOR MARCH 30, 1999

ITEM 1 MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR ANTENNA (replay)
ITEM 2 SPRINGTIME ON URANUS (replay)
ITEM 3 KC-135 STUDENT EXPERIMENTS (replay)

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ITEM 1 Mars Global Surveyor Antenna (replay)
     A steady stream of new data from Mars, including high-
resolution images, will begin arriving next week at Earth 
receiving stations following the March 28 deployment of the 
Mars Global Surveyor's high-power communications antenna. 
Before the antenna was fully deployed, the spacecraft had to 
stop collecting data periodically to transmit the information 
back to Earth. Now that the high-gain antenna is deployed, 
the spacecraft can study the Red Planet 24 hours a day. Video 
shows 1) animation of antenna deployment; 2) three recent 
images of Mars.

Contact at Headquarters: Douglas Isbell, 202/358-1547;
Contact at Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Mary Hardin, 818/354-
0344.

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ITEM 2 Springtime on Uranus (replay)
     If springtime on Earth were anything like it is now on 
Uranus, we would have numerous massive storm systems, each 
one covering the country from Kansas to New York and 
temperatures plunging to 300 degrees below zero. A dramatic 
new time-lapse movie by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows 
for the first time seasonal changes on the planet. No one has 
ever seen this view in the modern era of astronomy because of 
the long year of Uranus -- more than 84 Earth years. Uranus 
is now revealed as a dynamic world with the brightest clouds 
in the outer Solar System and a fragile ring system that 
wobbles like an unbalanced wagon wheel. 

Contact at Headquarters: Donald Savage, 202/358-1727;
Contact at Goddard Space Flight Center: Nancy Neal, 301/286-
0039;
Contact at Space Telescope Science Institute: Ray Villard, 
410/338-4514.

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ITEM 3  KC-135 Student Experiments (replay)
     For the third consecutive year, college students from 
around the country are investigating a variety of scientific 
experiments aboard a NASA KC-135A aircraft known as the 
"weightless wonder." The program will take up to 96 teams of 
undergraduate students aloft this year to study the effects 
of microgravity on their experiments. During each two- to 
three-hour flight, the aircraft maneuvers through a series of 
about 40 steep climbs and descents that can induce about 25 
seconds of a zero-gravity environment each. The KC-135A 
aircraft is used to introduce astronauts to the feeling of 
microgravity, test hardware and experiments destined for 
spaceflight and evaluate medical protocols that may be used 
in space.

Contact at Headquarters: Beth Schmid,  202/358-1760;
Contact at Johnson Space Center: Eileen M. Hawley, 281/483-
5111.

The NASA Video File airs at noon, 3, 6, 9 p.m. and midnight 
Eastern time. NASA Television is available on GE-2, 
transponder 9C at 85 degrees West longitude, with vertical 
polarization. Frequency is on 3880.0 megahertz, with audio 
at 6.8 megahertz. The full text of the most recent NASA 
Video File Advisory can be found at:

ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/tv-advisory/nasa-tv.txt

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Contract Awards

Contract awards are posted to the NASA Acquisition 
Information Service Web site.:

http://procurement.nasa.gov/EPS/award.html

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end of daily news summary