NASA Daily News Summary For Release: August 25, 1999 Media Advisory m99-174 Summary: MARS POLAR LANDER TO ARRIVE ON SMOOTH, LAYERED TERRAIN Video File for August 25, 1999 Item 1 - Mars Polar Lander Landing Site animation Item 2 - Hubble Space Telescope Image - Southern Crab Nebula (replay) Item 3 - X Vehicles (X-34, X-37, X-33) animation, b-roll, interviews (replay) NEW ITEM TO RUN, BEGINNING AT 6 PM EDT: Item 4 - Image of Tropical Storm Dennis as it drifts toward the central Bahamas. NOTE: Live Television Event Today 1:00 EDT - Mars 98 Landing Site Selection Space Science Update - NASA Headquarters Live Television Events Tomorrow 1:00 pm EDT - Chandra X-ray Telescope First Image Briefing - NASA Headquarters 4:30 - 8:30 pm EDT - Chandra Live News Interviews Live Television Events Friday, August 27 6:00 am EDT - Chandra X-Ray Telescope Live News Interviews - NASA Headquarters 10:00 - 11:55 am EDT - Mux Demux Test - JSC 2:00 - 2:20 pm - Mir 27 Crew Departure Ceremony - JSC 5:05 - 5:30 pm - Mir 27 Crew Undocking (Actual undocking 5:14 pm) - JSC  For information see: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv/breaking.html ********** MARS POLAR LANDER TO ARRIVE ON SMOOTH, LAYERED TERRAIN A strip of gentle, rolling plains near the Martian South Pole will serve as a welcome mat when NASA's Mars Polar Lander touches down on the Red Planet on Dec. 3. NASA unveiled the landing site, a swath of terrain measuring about 1,500 square miles (4,000 square kilometers), at a briefing today at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. The landing will be targeted to the center of the site, a rectangular area 124 miles (200 kilometers) long and 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) wide. The site was selected after the project team studied pictures and altimeter information gathered by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, which is currently orbiting the planet. The search was narrowed to four sites before the final location was chosen. Launched on Jan. 3, 1999, Mars Polar Lander will study the soil and look for ice beneath the surface of the Martian South Pole. The lander also carries two Deep Space Two Microprobes that will be deployed about five minutes before the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere. When they land, they will penetrate beneath the soil surface to look for water ice at nearby locations. The microprobes were developed under NASA's New Millennium Program. Contact at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC: Doug Isbell 202/358-1747. Contact at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA: Mary Hardin 818/354-5011. For full text, see: ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/1999/99-097.txt ---------- If NASA issues additional news releases later today, we will e-mail summaries and Internet URLs to this list. Index of 1999 NASA News Releases: http://www.nasa.gov/releases/1999/index.html ********** Video File for August 25, 1999 Item 1 - Mars Polar Lander Landing Site animation Contact at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC: Doug Isbell 202/358-1753. Contact at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CAFrank O'Donnell 818/354-5011. Item 1a - Zoom Into Landing Site TRT :40 This animation begins with a global view of Mars viewed from above the equator. The globe tilts to reveal the South Pole of Mars and the landing site of the Mars Polar Lander. As we zoom in, the site is marked with a 360x exaggerated model of the Lander. Item 1b - Simulated Flight Over the Landing Site TRT :23 A 3-D map created from Viking images and MOLA data enables us to create a simulated flight over the Mars Polar Lander landing zone. The Colorado-sized region is located near the South Pole in the Martian layered terrain. Item 1c - Mars Polar Lander Ellipse TRT :15 A global view of Mars serves as the backdrop for the Mars Polar Lander landing ellipse, colored blue in this image. The ellipse is centered at 75 degrees south latitude, 195 degrees west longitude, and is approximately 3.1 miles (5 km) wide and 62.1 miles (100 km) long. Item 1d - Mars Pathfinder vs. Polar Lander Terrain TRT :15 On this screen we compare the terrain from two missions to Mars. The left half of the screen contains an image of the Mars Pathfinder landing site; the right half, the Mars Polar Lander landing site. The scale in both images is the same. Item 1e - Mars Polar Lander animation (replay) Animation of the Mars Polar Lander entry, descent, landing and surface operation Item 1f - Deep Space 2 animation (replay) Deep Space-2 Microbprobe Mission to Mars animation demonstrates the probe's deployment, impact on Mars, subsurface operation and data transmission. Item 2 - Hubble Space Telescope Image - Southern Crab Nebula (replay) A tempestuous relationship between an unlikely pair of stars may have created an oddly shaped, gaseous nebula that resembles an hourglass nestled within an hourglass. Images taken with Earth- based telescopes have shown the larger, hourglass-shaped nebula. But this picture, taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, reveals a small, bright nebula embedded in the center of the larger one (close-up of nebula in inset). Astronomers have dubbed the entire nebula the "Southern Crab Nebula" (He2-104), because, from ground-based telescopes, it looks like the body and legs of a crab. The nebula is several light-years long. For more information see: http://www.stsci.edu/top.html Contact at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC: Donald Savage 202/358-1547. Contact at Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD: Ray Villard 410/338-4707. Item 3 - The X-33, X-34, and X-37 programs were designed to pave the way to a full-scale, commercially developed reusable launch vehicles. The Future-X Program will put the U.S. on a path toward safe, affordable, reliable access to space, by proving the latest technology is ready for space flight. (replay) For more information see: http://www1.msfc.nasa.gov/NEWMSFC/xplanes.html Item 3a - X-34 (animation) TRT 1:59 The unpiloted, reusable X-34 is designed to demonstrate technologies and operations necessary to cut the cost of putting payloads into orbit from $10,000 to $1,000 per pound. Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, VA, has an $85.7 million contract with NASA to design, build and test fly three X-34 vehicles. The winged, single-engine X-34 is 58.3 feet long. It has a 27.7-foot wingspan and stands 11.5 feet tall. It will be powered by a reusable Fastrac engine, designed and developed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center engineers and built by NASAšs industry partners. The X-34 is designed to be air-launched from beneath Orbital's modified L-1011 carrier plane and make an automated landing on a conventional runway and be readied for its next flight. Contact at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC: Jim Cast 202/358- 1779. Contact at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL: Dom Amatore 256/544-0031. Item 3b - X-37 New Space Plane (animation) TRT 3:44 NASA and the Boeing Co. have entered into an agreement to develop an experimental space plane called the X-37 that will be ferried into orbit to test new technologies for reusable launch vehicles. The reusable space plane can be carried into orbit by the shuttle or launched by a rocket. While in orbit, it will remain up to 21 days, performing a variety of experiments before re-entering the atmosphere and landing. The space plane will also demonstrate 41 airframe, propulsion and operations technologies aimed at significantly cutting the cost of space flight. Contact at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC: Jim Cast 202/358- 1779. Contact at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL: Dom Amatore 256/544-0031. Item 3c - Kennedy Space Center Delivers X-33 Vehicle's Umbilical System (replay) The X-33 is the flagship technology demonstrator for technologies that will dramatically lower the cost of access to space. It is unpiloted, taking off vertically like a rocket, reaching an altitude of up to 60 miles and speeds between Mach 13 and 15 (13 to 15 times the speed of sound), and landing horizontally like an airplane. As many as 15 flight tests are planned, beginning in 2000. Contact at NASA Kennedy Space Center, FL: Joel Wells 407/867- 2468. Item 3d - KSC Delivers X-33 Umbilical System TRT 1:06 Animation depicts the X-33 at the launch site on Edwards Air Force Base, CA. The highlighted area at the bottom of the vehicle identifies the umbilical system which was designed, fabricated and tested at Kennedy Space Center (KSC), FL. The prominent carbon steel tunnels provide launch blast protection to the sophisticated plumbing that transfers liquid propellant into the X-33. Item 3e - X-33 Footage TRT 3:31 Kennedy Space Center engineers and technicians designed, fabricated and tested the Umbilical System that will accommodate pre-launch propellant loading for the X-33 vehicle and split- second separation from the vehicle at launch. The final products were shipped to California in July 1999. Item 3f - B-roll TRT 2:10 The ground Umbilical components were shipped to Edwards Air Force, CA and installed at the X-33 launch site. The flight umbilical components were installed on the launch vehicle at the X-33 hangar in Palmdale, CA. Item 3g - Interview: Allen Littlefield TRT 2:00 NASA Engineer Allen Littlefield explains the important role of the X-33 umbilical system and discusses KSC's significant contributions to the project. Item 4 - Image of Tropical Storm Dennis as it drifts toward the central Bahamas. The image was captured at by NASA's SeaWiFS instrument onboard the SeaStar satellite on August 25 at 1:12 p.m. EDT. The purpose of the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) Project is to provide quantitative data on global ocean bio-optical properties to the Earth science community. Contact at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD: Wade Sisler 301/286-6256. Image is available on the Web at http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEAWIFS/IMAGES/S1999237171340 .L1A_HNSG.Dennis.jpg ----- The NASA Video File normally airs at noon, 3 p.m., 6 p.m., 9 p.m. and midnight Eastern Time. NASA Television is available on GE-2, transponder 9C at 85 degrees West longitude, with vertical polarization. Frequency is on 3880.0 megahertz, with audio on 6.8 megahertz. Refer general questions about the video file to NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC: Ray Castillo, 202/358-4555, or Elvia Thompson, 202/358-1696. During Space Shuttle missions, you can access the full NASA TV schedule from: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/nasatv/schedule.html For general information about NASA TV see: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv/ ********** Contract Awards Contract awards are posted to the NASA Acquisition information Service Web site: http://procurement.nasa.gov/EPS/award.html ********** The NASA Daily News Summary is issued each business day at approximately 2 p.m. Eastern time. Members of the media who wish to subscribe or unsubscribe from this list, please send e-mail message to: Brian.Dunbar@hq.nasa.gov ********** end of daily news summary