NASA Daily News Summary For Release: Mar. 24, 2000 Media Advisory m00-58 SUMMARY NEWS RELEASES: NEXT SPACE SCIENCE UPDATE UNVEILS SIGNIFICANT ADVANCE IN PLANET HUNTING NASA'S SUCCESSFUL COMPTON GAMMA-RAY TELESCOPE MISSION COMES TO AN END HESSI SUSTAINS DAMAGE DURING VIBRATION TESTING VIDEO: VIDEO FILE: ITEM 1 - INERNATIONAL SPACE STATION - MSFC (replay) ITEM 2 - IMAGE - GSFC (replay) LIVE TELEVISION EVENTS THIS WEEK ***************************** LIVE TELEVISION EVENTS THIS WEEK March 24, Friday - 6:00 - 10:00 am - Students Help NASA Test International Space Station Science Communications Live News Interviews - MSFC - 1:00 pm - Gamma Ray Observatory Press Conference - HQ - 2:00 pm - IMAGE L-1 Prelaunch Press Conference - Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA March 25, Saturday - 2:00 pm - Live Coverage and Commentary of the IMAGE Launch - Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA - 3:35 pm - IMAGE Launch - Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA ***************************** NEWS RELEASES: NASA'S SUCCESSFUL COMPTON GAMMA-RAY TELESCOPE MISSION COMES TO AN END NASA's extremely productive and long-lived Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory mission -- which exceeded its mission by four years and completely changed ideas on the most important unsolved puzzles in astrophysics -- has come to end with the failure of one of the satellite's three gyroscopes. NASA plans to safely direct the satellite back into Earth's atmosphere no earlier than June 1 with the remaining two gyroscopes, which are used to steer the craft. As an extra precaution, Compton engineers are also developing a method to control the satellite without any gyroscopes, for use as backup during the reentry maneuvers in case an anomaly is encountered with the gyroscopes. Compton's lasting legacy will be its impact on gamma ray astronomy. The telescope detected more than 400 gamma ray sources, 10 times more than were previously known. Compton recorded more than 2,500 gamma ray bursts; before Compton, only about 300 had been detected. Contact at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC: Dolores Beasley (Phone 202/358-1753). Contact at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD: Nancy Neal (Phone 301/286-0039). For full text, see: ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/2000/00-044.txt ----------------------------- NEXT SPACE SCIENCE UPDATE UNVEILS SIGNIFICANT ADVANCE IN PLANET HUNTING The renowned team of planet-hunting astronomers, Geoffrey Marcy and Paul Butler, will announce a breakthrough in detecting planets outside our Solar System at the next Space Science Update (SSU), scheduled for Wednesday, March 29, at 1 p.m. EST. The NASA- and National Science Foundation-sponsored research was conducted at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Contact at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC: Donald Savage (Phone 202/358-1547). Contact at University of California, Berkeley, CA: Robert Sanders (Phone: 510/643-6998). Contact at W.H. Keck Observatory, Kamuela, HI: Andrew Perala (Phone: 808/885-7887). For full text, see: ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/note2edt/2000/n00-012.txt ----------------------------- HESSI SUSTAINS DAMAGE DURING VIBRATION TESTING NASA's High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager spacecraft -- an international mission to explore the basic physics of particle acceleration and energy release in solar flares -- has sustained substantial damage during vibration testing. Repairs to the spacecraft, known as HESSI, will likely delay its launch to no earlier than January 2001. Contact at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC: Dolores Beasley (Phone 202/358-1753). Contact at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD: Mark Hess (Phone: 301/286-8982). Contact at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA: Mary Beth Murrill (Phone 818/354-5011). For full text, see: ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/2000/00-045.txt ----------------------------- If NASA issues any news releases later today, we will e- mail summaries and Internet URLs to this list. Index of 2000 NASA News Releases: http://www.nasa.gov/releases/2000/index.html Index of 1999 NASA News Releases: http://www.nasa.gov/releases/1999/index.html ***************************** VIDEO: Unless otherwise noted, ALL TIMES ARE EASTERN. ANY CHANGES TO THE VIDEO LINE-UP WILL APPEAR ON THE NASA VIDEO FILE ADVISORY ON THE WEB AT ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/tv-advisory/nasa-tv.txt WE UPDATE THE ADVISORY THROUGHOUT THE DAY. The NASA Video File normally airs at noon, 3 p.m., 6 p.m., 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 on 6.8 megahertz. Refer general questions about the video file to NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC: Ray Castillo, 202/358-4555, or Fred Brown, 202/358-0713, fred.brown@hq.nasa.gov During Space Shuttle missions, the full NASA TV schedule will continue to be posted at: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/nasatv/schedule.html For general information about NASA TV see: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv/ ***************************** Contract Awards Contract awards are posted to the NASA Acquisition information Service Web site: http://procurement.nasa.gov/EPS/award.html ***************************** The NASA Daily News Summary is issued each business day at approximately 2 p.m. Eastern time. Members of the media who wish to subscribe or unsubscribe from this list, please send e-mail message to: Brian.Dunbar@hq.nasa.gov ***************************** end of daily news summary