Daily News Thursday, October 8, 1992 24-hour audio service at 202/755-1788 % Columbia activity on schedule, hypergolic fuel loading to begin today; % Hubble telescope battery reconditioning program successfully underway; % Goddard awards service contract for Hubble to Lockheed Missiles & Space; % Hubble & Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer science update today at 1:00 pm; % Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite still down one instrument; % Compton science team focusing on unusual X-ray nova source. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Preparations for Columbia's STS-52 mission, two weeks hence, are continuing on schedule at Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39-B. Hypergolic fuel loading will occur today and tomorrow with the hydraulic, mechanical and electrical flight readiness test set to occur this Sunday. The mission will be the 51st in the shuttle program and the 13th flight for NASA's pioneering orbiter. The window for Columbia's launch opens at 11:16 am EDT on Thursday, October 22 and closes two-and-a-half hours later. The mission is planned as a 9-day, 20-hour flight with a scheduled end-of-mission landing at Kennedy's Shuttle Landing Facility. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Hubble Space Telescope flight controllers at the Goddard Space Flight Center report success in their spacecraft battery reconditioning program. The first four of the telescope's six nickel-hydrogen batteries have been fully discharged and are presently being recharged. Following an analysis of the discharge/recharge profile of these four batteries, the Goddard team will begin a reconditioning of the remaining two batteries. Goddard has awarded Lockheed Missiles and Space Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif., a cost-plus-award-fee contract for the Hubble Space Telescope Flight Systems and Servicing effort. The contract is a follow-on to current, expiring, contracts, and will be in excess of $147 million for a 3-year period. The effort includes defining, planning, integrating and executing the on-orbit servicing program for the telescope, including the first servicing mission in December 1993. That first mission will involve the exchange of one of the telescope's present instruments for the corrective optics package. Also, astronaut crewmembers will upgrade the planetary camera with a new generation assembly, install new solar arrays and install replacement gyro assembly units. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * NASA and university astronomers will present another in the Space Astronomy Update series today at 1:00 pm EDT in the NASA Headquarters auditorium. The panel members will present a striking Hubble Space Telescope picture of a gravitational lens-produced mirror image of a distant galaxy and an Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer image of a powerful object two billion light years from the Milky Way. The presentation will be shown live on NASA Select television. The Hubble observations will help provide new information on distant galaxies and on the distribution of dark matter, the nature of which remains unknown. The Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer data provide new information about objects visible in that wavelength of light. Briefers will be Richard Ellis, University of Durham, U.K.; Bruce Margon, University of Washington, Seattle; Daniel Weedman, Pennsylvania State University, University Park; and Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer principal scientist Stuart Bowyer, University of California at Berkeley; Steve Maran, Goddard Space Flight Center astronomer and Hubble co-investigator, will serve as panel moderator. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Goddard controllers working with the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite report that continued attempts to restart the chopper wheel motor on the Improved Stratospheric and Mesospheric Sounder instrument have been unsuccessful. With the exception of carbon monoxide, data which the sounder would acquire are being taken by a combination of the other five atmospheric measuring instruments aboard the satellite. Compton Gamma Ray Observatory scientists report they are continuing their observations of an unusually bright X-ray nova in the constellation Perseus. The science team also reports that since their observations began last summer the observatory has detected 436 cosmic gamma-ray bursts. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 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. Live indicates a program is transmitted live. Thursday, October 8, 1992 12:00 pm The Unwritten Contract. 12:15 pm Aeronautics & Space Report. 12:30 pm Visions of Other Worlds. Live 1:00 pm Space Astronomy Update presenting new Hubble Space Telescope and Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer images and featuring Richard Ellis, University of Durham, U.K.; Bruce Margon, University of Washington, Seattle; Daniel Weedman, Pennsylvania State University, University Park; and Steve Maran, Goddard Space Flight Center. Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer principal scientist Stuart Bowyer, University of California at Berkeley, will present his team's findings via videotape. 2:00 pm Total Quality Management Colloquium with Edward Stone, Director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, on the topic of "Restructuring Cassini." 2:36 pm Around the World and on the Way. 3:00 pm Total Quality Management program #40 from the University of New Mexico series. 4:00 pm 8:00 pm & 12:00 midnight 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.