Donald L. Savage
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.                                        
May 12, 1994
(Phone:  202/358-1547)

Michael Finneran
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
(Phone:  301/286-5565)


RELEASE:  94-75

NASA TO STOP WORK ON POLAR SPACECRAFT

    NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin today announced that the  
Agency will stop work on the Polar spacecraft and will continue 
with pre-launch activities on the Wind spacecraft.  Work on Polar 
will resume only after the Wind spacecraft has been successfully 
operated on-orbit and a re-evaluation of the resources required 
for the completion of the GGS Program has been completed within 
the context of overall budget constraints.

    In February, NASA announced the delay of the launches of both 
missions to examine potentially defective materials and processes 
used by the contractor to build components on the two spacecraft 
as well as to review the overall program.  The launch date for the 
Wind spacecraft has not been firmly established pending completion 
of retest activities.  The launch of the Wind spacecraft is 
expected to occur prior to the end of this year.  

    NASA is developing a set of critical program milestones that 
will be used to monitor contractor performance through the launch 
of the Wind spacecraft.  The performance of the contractor in 
meeting these milestones will be closely monitored by NASA.  If 
contractor performance on the Wind spacecraft is satisfactory and 
Polar is authorized to proceed, then critical program milestones 
will be developed to monitor the Polar spacecraft through the 
completion of its development and launch.  

    Additionally, NASA is in the process of totally restructuring 
the contractor award fee so that the contractor will receive no 
fee until on-orbit performance is satisfactory.  The spacecraft 
contractor is Martin Marietta Astro-Space, East Windsor, N.J.

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    The Wind and Polar spacecraft constitute the U.S. 
contribution to the Global Geospace Science (GGS) Program, a part 
of the International Solar-Terrestrial Physics Program involving 
several spacecraft from the U.S., Europe and Japan in a study of 
the interaction of the solar wind and Earth's magnetic field.

    The Wind and Polar projects are managed by NASA's Goddard 
Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., for the Office of Space 
Science, Washington, D.C.  

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