NASA Daily News Summary For Release: August 27, 1999 Media Advisory m99-176 Summary: NASA READIES ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STUDY ON X-34 TESTING IN NEW MEXICO, CALIFORNIA AND FLORIDA Video File for August 27, 1999 Item 1 - Satellite View of Hurricane Dennis "3-D Interior Structure" Item 2 - Extraterrestrial Water Found Trapped in Meteorite Item 3 - Russian Mir Space Station Program to End Soon (replay) Includes today's departure ceremony 6:00 pm feed and subsequent will include Mir Crew undocking Item 4 - Chandra X-Ray Telescope First Images (replay) NOTE: Live Television Events Today 6:00 am - Chandra X-Ray Telescope Live News Interviews - NASA Headquarters 10:00 - 11:55 am EDT - Mux Demux Test - JSC 2:00 - 2:20 pm - Mir 27 Crew Departure Ceremony - JSC 5:05 - 5:30 pm - Mir 27 Crew Undocking (Actual undocking 5:14 pm) - JSC  For information see: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv/breaking.html ********** NASA READIES ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STUDY ON X-34 TESTING IN NEW MEXICO, CALIFORNIA AND FLORIDA NASA is finalizing plans to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for powered test flights of its X-34 rocket plane, scheduled to begin next year. In order to carry out X-34 powered flights outside the boundaries of existing flight ranges, an Environmental Impact Statement is required. An EIS may also constitute a step toward establishing the feasibility and desirability, from an environmental perspective, of powered flights involving other, future NASA experimental vehicles. The X-34 EIS process plan includes California, New Mexico and Florida as reasonable alternative sites to carry out X-34 powered flights or flight testing of other future NASA experimental vehicles at some time in the future. Other states involved in the EIS process are Nevada and Utah, which the X-34 would fly over during California-based test flights. Those states also are being evaluated as contingency landing sites. North and South Carolina are being evaluated for contingency landings for Florida based flights. The final test plan will not be approved until after the final EIS is issued. Contact at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC: Jim Cast 202/358- 1779. Contact at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL: Dom Amatore 256/544-0031. For full text, see: ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/1999/99-100.txt ---------- If NASA issues additional 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 ********** Video File for August 27, 1999 Item 1 - Satellite View of Hurricane Dennis "3-D TRT 1:19 Interior Structure" This 3-D hurricane image shows the precipitation rates and the height of the rain column in Hurricane Dennis. Red color indicates rain rates in excess of 2 inches per hour. This TRMM (Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission) animation sequence is of Hurricane Dennis early this morning as it hovered above Bermuda, heading toward Florida. TRMM is a joint U.S.-Japanese mission. These images were enhanced and rendered at the Scientific and Visualization Studio (SVS) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. Contact at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD: Rachel Weintraub 301/286-0918. Item 2 - Extraterrestrial Water Found TRT :32 Trapped in Meteorite Based on an analysis by Johnson Space Center researchers, a meteorite that landed last year in a west Texas yard contains the first samples of extraterrestrial water trapped inside mineral grains. The tiny bubbles are trapped inside halite crystals in the meteor which have turned blue and purple by radiation. Sequence shows a view of the halite crystals and a close-up view that points out the bubbles. Contact at NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX: Eileen M. Hawley 281/483-5111 Item 3 - Russian Mir Space Station Program to End Soon (replay) The Mir 27 crew will depart the Russian space station on Friday, August 27 (early Saturday, Moscow time). This will be the first time that Mir (the Russian word for peace) will be unpopulated since April 27, 1989. Russian flight controllers will continue to operate Mir, unpiloted, from the Russian Mission Control Center. Mir 27 Commander Viktor Afanasayev and French researcher Jean- Pierre Haignere will return to Earth after spending 189 days in space. They were launched to Mir on February 20, 1999. Flight Engineer Sergei Avdeyev will return to Earth after spending 380 days in space since his launch with a previous Mir crew on August 13, 1998. When he lands, Avdeyev will have logged a total of 748 days in space on his three space flights, more than any other human in history. Contact at NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX: Rob Navias or Kyle Herring 281/483-5111. Item 3a - Interview with Frank Culbertson TRT 3:36 Culbertson, Manager for Operations, International Space Station Program, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, discusses the departure of the Mir 27 cosmonauts from the Russian space station and the significance of Mir in human space flight history. Item 3b - Mir B-Roll TRT 1:43 IMAX footage of the Russian Mir space station as seen from the Space Shuttle. Item 3c - Today's departure ceremony aboard Mir approx. TRT 12:00 Item 3d - Mir Crew Undocking 6:00 pm feed and subsequent will include Mir Crew undocking Item 4 - Chandra X-Ray Telescope First Images (replay) Contact at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC: Donald Savage 202/358-1547. Contact at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville AL: Dave Drachlis 256/544-0034. Item 4a - Chandra First Light - animation TRT :54 This animation begins with a supernova explosion which then dissolves into an x-ray image of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant. This is the official first light image of the Chandra X- Ray Observatory. A still frame of the x-ray image follows the animated sequence. (red image) The 5,000-second image was made with the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS). Two shock waves are visible: a fast outer shock and a slower inner shock. The inner shock wave is believed to be due to the collision of the ejecta from the supernova explosion with a circumstellar shell of material, heating it to a temperature of ten million degrees. The outer shock wave is analogous to an awesome sonic boom resulting from this collision. The bright object near the center may be the long-sought neutron star or black hole remnant of the explosion that produced Cassiopeia A. Item 4b - Quasar with an X-ray Jet TRT :15 This image of PKS 0637-752 is so distant that we see it as it was 6 billion years ago. It is a luminous quasar that radiates the power of 10 trillion suns from a region smaller than our solar system. The source is believed to be a supermassive black hole. (blue image) Radio observations of PKS 0637-752 show that it has an extended radio jet that stretches across several hundred thousand light years. Chandra's x-ray image reveals a powerful x-ray jet of similar size that is probably due to a beam of extremely high energy particles. Item 4c - Science team b-roll TRT 1:14 Footage shows the science team in Cambridge, Mass. as they view the first images from the Chandra telescope. Item 4d - Launch of Chandra TRT :30 Footage shows the launch of STS-93, on which Chandra was carried into space. Item 4e - Deployment of Chandra TRT :39 Footage shows the Chandra X-ray telescope as it is deployed from the space shuttle and later in orbit. Item 4f - Chandra Animation TRT :48 Animation shows the Chandra X-ray Telescope after deployment from the space shuttle. Item 4g - Chandra Interview - Dr. Martin Weisskopf, TRT :58 Project Scientist NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL. Item 4h - Chandra Interview - Dr. Harvey Tannanbaum, TRT :42 Director, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA. Item 4i - Chandra Interview - Art Stephenson, Director, TRT :45 Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL ----- Unless otherwise noted, ALL TIMES ARE EASTERN. ANY CHANGES TO THE 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 Elvia Thompson, 202/358-1696, elvia.thompson@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