Headline News Internal Communications Branch (P-2) NASA Headquarters Tuesday, April 7, 1992 Audio Service: 202 / 755-1788 This is NASA Headline News for Tuesday, April 7, 1992 . . . Following yesterday's successful 22-second test firing of Endeavour's three shuttle main engines, Kennedy Space Center technicians are presently analyzing the engine performance data but note that the initial results look good. Concurrently, launch pad technicians are reconfiguring the pad from yesterday's test to the normal launch configuration. The next event scheduled for the STS-49 Endeavour vehicle is the flight crew - launch team terminal countdown demonstration test presently set for April 17. The flight director and payload manager pre-launch briefings for the ambitious STS-49 mission took place this morning from Johnson Space Center. They were aired live on NASA Select TV and will be repeated this afternoon beginning at 2:00 pm. Tomorrow, the flight crew briefing will be aired live at 9:00 am EST and repeated later in the day. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Astrophysicists associated with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory will hold a press briefing tomorrow at 1:00 pm EST in the NASA Headquarters auditorium to discuss new information obtained with data from both these spacecraft. Scientists using Hubble data as well as ground- based optical telescope data will discuss the discovery of a potentially massive black hole in our galactic backyard a mere 2.3 million light years away. Compton Observatory scientists will report on a new class of gamma ray quasars which have been discovered. Both teams of scientists will also discuss the significance of the new findings and place them into a cosmological context. The briefing will be carried live on NASA Select TV, and will also feature new images and a 4- minute video animation depicting the collapse of a galactic core. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Noted science fiction author and futurist Isaac Asimov, 72, died Monday, April 6, at New York University Hospital of heart and kidney ailments. Asimov was the author of more than 320 books and non-fiction articles published in journals and magazines. He is the human who coined the term "robotics" and derived the notion that robots may not injure a human. Asimov was born in the Russian village of Petrovichi, about 250 miles southwest of Moscow, and immigrated to the U.S. in 1923 with his family. They settled in Brooklyn. He received a masters and doctoral degree in chemistry from Columbia University and while teaching at Boston University in 1950 penned his first science fiction novel. Dr. Asimov was one of the humanists invited by JPL to participate in and observe the 1976 landing of the two Viking spacecraft on Mars. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Jet Propulsion Laboratory flight controllers report that Magellan continues to perform nominally in its orbit about Venus. The spacecraft continues to perform stereo mapping and has thus far covered 14 percent of the planet in the stereo mode. This mapping mode matches images being taken currently by Magellan with images obtained in the first mapping cycle, 16 months ago. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Marshall Space Flight Center education specialists report their space education data base -- Spacelink -- has reached a record level of users with nearly 18,000 registered individuals logging in to the electronic system. Twenty percent of the users are teachers and an additional one-third of the total users are students. Marshall says there are over 6,600 files available on the system. During the STS-45 Atlas-1 mission, the system was receiving over 1,000 callers a day. Marshall and the Johnson Space Center education office both supported the recently-completed Technology Conference in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. The two centers provided exhibits and education specialists for the exhibition, which hosted an estimated student audience of 9,300. Here's the broadcast schedule for Public Affairs events on NASA Select TV. Note that all events and times may change without notice, and that all times listed are Eastern. Tuesday, April 7, 1992 1:00 pm Continuous Improvement Colloquium from NASA Headquarters. 2:00 pm Repeat of STS-49 pre-mission briefings from Johnson Space Center including Flight Director briefing, Intelsat briefing, Commercial Protein Crystal Growth briefing, and Endeavour overview briefing. Wednesday, April 8, 1992 9:00 am STS-49 pre-mission flight crew briefing from JSC. 1:00 pm Hubble Space Telescope / Compton Gamma Ray Observatory press conference on Black Holes and Quasars from NASA Headquarters. 2:00 pm Delayed presentation of Associate Administrator for Space Science and Applications Dr. Lennard Fisk's testimony on the Landsat program before the House Environment Subcommittee (taped on April 7). This report is filed daily at noon, Monday through Friday. It is a service of NASA's Office of Public Affairs. The editor is Charles Redmond, 202/453-8425 or CREDMOND on NASAmail. NASA Select TV is carried on GE Satcom F2R, transponder 13, C-Band, 72 degrees West Longitude, transponder frequency is 3960 MegaHertz, audio subcarrier is 6.8 MHz, polarization is vertical.