Headline News Internal Communications Branch (P-2) NASA Headquarters Tuesday, February 26, 1991 Audio Service: 202 / 755-1788 This is NASA Headline News for Tuesday, February 26, 1991 Preparations to ready Discovery for a early March launch continue. Activity today on Launch Pad 39-A involves preparations for ordnance installation. The first elements of that ordnance will be installed tonight. The pad will be closed to non-essential personnel during the installation process. Discovery's three main engines yesterday successfully underwent their flight readiness test. Air Force and NASA technicians are engaged in a payload end-to-end test today. On Thursday, technicians will install space suits into Discovery's air lock, and on Friday, the external tank will be purged. The Office of Space Flight management council will meet today. Among the presentations will be a current analysis of the cracked hinge clevis on Discovery's fuel-line belly doors. The issue will also be addressed at the STS-39 Flight Readiness Review, scheduled for Thursday and Friday. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The Public Broadcasting Service will be showing the first episode in a three-part series on the Soviet space program tonight. Locally, Channels 26 and 22 will air the program at 8:00 pm. The PBS show is part of the Nova series and is entitled "Russian Right Stuff." The program continues tomorrow and concludes on Thursday. It was produced for PBS by WGBH, Boston, and contains significant amounts of Soviet space program footage never before aired. The program takes three different perspectives for the three episodes. Tonight's focus is the manned aspect of the Soviet program. Wednesday's show features Soviet attempts to get to the moon, and is entitled "The Dark Side of the Moon." Thursday's concluding episode follows a Soviet crew as they train for a stay on the Mir space station. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The Royal Astronomical Society, London, has announced finding a group of quasars which could be one of the largest features so far seen in the universe. The find is reported in the March 15 issue of the Society's Monthly Notices, and cites work done by Dr. Roger Clowes, Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, and Dr. Luis Campusano, University of Chile, Santiago. The astronomers report the results of extensive surveys taken at both the United Kingdom Schmidt Telescope, Australia, and the Cerro Tololo, Chile, Southern Hemisphere Observatory. These results, using computerized telescope images which where then analyzed by a special search algorithm, show an elongated group of at least 10 of quasars at a distance of nearly 6.5 billion light years. There may be three more quasars belonging to the group, whose dimensions are 650 million light years long by 100 million light years wide. Here's the broadcast schedule for Public Affairs events on NASA Select TV. All times are Eastern. NASA Select TV is carried on GE Satcom F2R, transponder 13, C-Band, 72 degrees W Long., Audio 6.8, Frequency 3960 MHz.**indicates a live program. Tuesday, 2/26/91 12:00 pm Liftoff to Learning program, "Space Basics." 12:20 pm Starfinder program, "How Big Is the Universe?" 12:35 pm Seeds Revisited, space tomato seeds program. 2:00 pm Black History Month program. Wednesday, 2/27/91 1:15 pm Magellan-at-Venus report, live from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. All events and times may change without notice. This report is filed daily, Monday through Friday, at 12:00 pm, EST. It is a service of NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs. Contact: CREDMOND on NASAmail or at 202/453-8425.