Headline News Internal Communications Branch (P-2) NASA Headquarters Friday, April 24, 1992 Audio Service: 202 / 755-1788 This is NASA Headline News for Friday, April 24, 1992 . . . When Endeavour lifts off for the first time, ten days from now, eighteen special students from two different schools and their teachers and parents will be among the many on hand at Kennedy Space Center to hail America's newest orbiter and its missions of discovery. The students, from the Senatobia Middle School in Mississippi and the Tallulah Falls School in Georgia are members of the winning teams in the Orbiter Naming Contest. The contest challenged school children in two categories -- kindergarten through 6th grade and 7th through 12th grade - to propose a name for the replacement orbiter and a project which would explain their choice of a name. The response to the contest was tremendous with 6,154 different teams comprised of more than 71,000 students submitting proposals. Both the winning schools proposed the name Endeavour. The middle and senior level students from the Tallulah Falls School created as their project a math magazine based on the original Endeavour's navigation and scientific exploration goals and published in a lower, middle and senior-grade version for the school's math classes. The students also presented a play to their classmates which compared 18th century exploration activities to those occurring in the 20th century. The younger students from the Senatobia Middle School chose as their project a student-teacher space program which involved the school's 5th graders teaching kindergarten and first- and second-graders about space exploration. These students also set up a space camp activity for their fellow students which offered nearly a dozen separate activity areas including the mock assembly of a space station using lunchroom straws. As part of NASA's activities to commend these students and interest others in math and science endeavors, the agency will host a teacher space education workshop next week at the Kennedy Space Center in connection with the STS-49 launch. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Meanwhile, work to ready Endeavour for its launch at 8:34 pm EDT on Monday, May 4, continues on schedule. Activity over the weekend will include the shuttle main engine and propulsion system helium signature leak test and the initial stages of ordnance installation. Next Tuesday, April 28, the payload bay doors will be sealed for launch and the aft compartment will be closed out. Assuming a launch at the beginning of the window on Monday, the 6-day, 23-hour mission is set to conclude with a landing at Edwards Air Force Base on May 11. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Flights of the X-31 Enhanced Fighter Maneuverability demonstrator aircraft resumed yesterday afternoon at the Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards, Calif. The X-31s are being flown at Dryden to show the value of thrust vectoring coupled with an advanced flight control system for close-in air combat at very high angles-of-attack. An international test organization, managed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is conducting the flight tests to obtain data that may apply to highly-maneuverable next- generation fighters. Next year, an international team of pilots will make as many as 20 test flights a month in each of the two X- 31 aircraft. The two aircraft have made 108 test flights to date and first flew in October l990. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * This Sunday, April 26, Goddard Space Flight Center hosts its annual Community Day. The all-day event features music by the Airmen of Note, an astronaut presentation of flying in space, a science bowl competition for local students, launches on model rockets, tours of Goddard operational areas and an opportunity to mix with Goddard scientists who are working on the Mission to Planet Earth programs. The activities begin at 10:30 am EDT and continue through 4:00 pm. 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. Friday, April 24, 1992 12:00 pm NASA Today news program, today featuring a report from Washington on the discoveries of the Cosmic Background Explorer; a photographic retrospective on the Hubble Space Telescope's first two years worth of images; a report on the progress being made at Goddard Space Flight Center to prepare the nextgeneration of weather satellites for delivery to orbit; and a report from two Washington-area schools on female students who have been commended for their projects by the Women in Science and Engineering. 12:15 pm Adventures in Research. 12:30 pm Apollo-Soyuz. 1:00 pm Cosmic Background Explorer press conference (taped 4/23/92). 2:00 pm Launch Box program #3. 2:30 pm Space Navigation. 3:00 pm Total Quality Management #65 (Univ. of New Mexico series). 4:00 pm NASA Today and subsequent programming repeats. 8:00 pm NASA Today and subsequent programming repeats. 12:00 am NASA Today and subsequent programming repeats. 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.