Headline News Internal Communications Branch (P-2) NASA Headquarters Thursday, August 15, 1991 Audio Service: 202 / 755-1788 This is NASA Headline News for Thursday, August 15, 1991 . . . Goddard Space Flight Center reports that the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer, aboard the Soviet Meteor-3 weather satellite, was successfully launched this morning at 4:14 am EDT (12:14 pm Moscow time) from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, North-North-East of Moscow. Goddard's John Loiacono, TOMS chief engineer, was at the launch site and described the launch as "beautiful." According to a report from the Moscow Flight Control Center everything is nominal. The spacecraft is 13.8 feet long by 4.6 feet wide, weighs 4,884 pounds and was placed in a 992-mile high polar orbit. Inclination is 82.5 degrees and the orbital period is 109 minutes. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Preparations for the launch of STS-48, Discovery's upcoming mission to deploy the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, are progressing on schedule at the Kennedy Space Center. The helium signature leak check of Discovery's three main engines got underway this morning. The countdown demonstration test with the flight crew is scheduled for next Monday and Tuesday, August 19 and 20. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Jet Propulsion Laboratory flight controllers report that Galileo is currently in an all-spin mode with the high-gain antenna turned 165 degrees away from the Sun. This is JPL's second antenna cooling experiment, and began last week when a number of heaters and ancillary electrical devices associated with the antenna were switched off. The spacecraft was oriented to its present antenna- in-the-shade position on Monday and will be reoriented to a normal cruise-mode position later today. This cooling experiment is aimed at causing sufficient shrinkage in the antenna's deployment mechanism ribs to allow them to become unstuck. JPL's flight team cautions that there is no direct way to measure the shrinkage or to observe the freeing of a stuck rib. The team will, instead, collect inertial gyroscope data from the spacecraft after its return to a normal cruise-mode orientation. The degree and direction of wobble can then be measured over an extended period allowing the engineers to infer the offset in Galileo's center of gravity. If the ribs have been freed or partially freed, the center-of- gravity measurement will be offset. This process will take several days to collect the data and then perform analysis on it. Meanwhile, Galileo continues to perform nominally in its looping trajectory, now some 156 million miles from Earth, and moving at a heliocentric velocity of nearly 41,000 miles per hour. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Johnson Space Center principal investigator on the Space Station Heat Pipe Advanced Radiator Element-II experiment, John Cornwell, has provided additional information about the experiments performed on the STS-43 mission. The mission flew two 22-foot long heat pipes: one based on heat pipe technology flown previously on the STS-29 mission, which used arterial heat pipe concepts; the other a graded-groove heat pipe based on axial groove concepts. Both units were twice as long and had ten times the performance capabilities of any previously flown heat pipe hardware. Cornwell reports that the arterial heat pipe performed well throughout the flight and successfully demonstrated all design modifications which had been incorporated since the STS-29 flight. The other heat pipe, the axial groove version, operated well at low heat loads but was unable to consistently operate at higher heat loads. JSC reports that the ground experiment support team was able to accommodate an evolving experiment plan during the flight and thus obtained more data than originally called for in the mission flight plan. The STS-43 heat pipe experiments, according to Cornwell, provided the world's best zero-G heat pipe laboratory and expanded the envelope of heat pipe knowledge significantly. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Funeral services for retired astronaut James B. Irwin took place this morning at Arlington National Cemetery. Agency Administrator Adm. Richard Truly, and other officials, attended. 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. indicates a program is transmitted live. Thursday, August 15, 1991 12:00 pm STS-48 Protein Crystal Growth experiment briefing. 12:30 pm STS-48 Polymer Membrane Processing experiment briefing. 1:30 pm STS-48 Zero Gravity Dynamics experiment briefing. 2:00 pm STS-48 Physiological and Anatomical experiment briefing. 2:30 pm STS-48 Color Laser Imaging experiment briefing. 3:00 pm STS-48 astronaut crew briefing. 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.