NASA Daily News Summary For Release: Feb. 17, 2000 Media Advisory m00-031 SUMMARY NEWS RELEASES: NEAR BEGINS LOOKING CLOSELY AT EROS NASA AWARDS FACULTY RESEARCH GRANTS SCHOOL CHILDREN USING INTERNET TO OBSERVE EARTH WITH SPACE SHUTTLE CAMERA VIDEO: ALL TIMES EASTERN Due to Live Coverage of Space Shuttle Mission STS-99, VIDEO FILE WILL ONLY RUN AT NOON PM TODAY. See descriptions below. ***************************** NEAR BEGINS LOOKING CLOSELY AT EROS Only a few days into the first close-up study of an asteroid, data from NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission indicate that 433 Eros is no ordinary space rock. Since the NEAR spacecraft met up with and began its historic orbit of Eros on Feb. 14, NEAR team members at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, MD, which manages the mission for NASA, have pored over images and other early scientific returns. It will take months to unravel the deeper mysteries of Eros, but data from NEAR's final approach and first days of orbit offer tantalizing glimpses of an ancient surface covered with craters, grooves, layers, house-sized boulders and other complex features. Contact at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC: Donald Savage (Phone 202/358-1547). Contact at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD: Mike Buckley (Phone: 240/228-7536) For full text, see: ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/2000/00-028.txt ----------------------------- NASA AWARDS FACULTY RESEARCH GRANTS The NASA Office of Equal Opportunity Programs has awarded 15 research grants to 11 minority colleges and universities for faculty research. The awards, under the Faculty Awards for Research (FAR) program, went to six Historically Black Colleges and Universities and five Other Minority Universities, including four to Hispanic Serving Institutions and one to Tribal Colleges and Universities. The FAR grants provide opportunities for minority colleges and universities, in collaboration with the NASA Centers and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to provide research experiences in NASA-related fields for faculty and students to support and encourage their teaching and research careers. These experiences will enhance cultural diversity in the NASA-sponsored research community as well as increase the employment pool from which NASA and the aerospace industry can draw. Contact at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC: Sonja Alexander (Phone: 202/358-1761). For full text, see: ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/media/2000/m00-030.txt ----------------------------- SCHOOL CHILDREN USING INTERNET TO OBSERVE EARTH WITH SPACE SHUTTLE CAMERA NOTE TO MEDIA: LOCAL STORY ANGLES FOR SHUTTLE MISSION STS-99 Middle-school students from 21 states and three foreign countries are participating in EarthKAM, a NASA-sponsored program that enables middle school students to take photographs of the Earth from a camera aboard the Space Shuttle. During missions, students work collectively and use interactive World Wide Web pages to target images and investigate the Earth from the unique perspective of space. The University of California at San Diego houses the EarthKAM Mission Operations Center (MOC). For more information on EarthKAM, and a collection several hundred photographs taken during this mission, see: http://www.earthkam.ucsd.edu/ For full text, see: ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/media/2000/m00-032.txt ----------------------------- If NASA issues any news releases later today, we will e- mail summaries and Internet URLs to this list. Index of 2000 NASA News Releases: http://www.nasa.gov/releases/2000/index.html Index of 1999 NASA News Releases: http://www.nasa.gov/releases/1999/index.html ***************************** VIDEO Video File Summary: ITEM 1 - SHUTTLE RADAR TOPOGRAPHY MISSION (SRTM) IMAGES OF EARTH NOTE: NEW IMAGES WILL BE RELEASED AT TODAY'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING ON NASA TELEVISION, 3:00 PM ITEM 2 - NEAR EARTH ASTEROID RENDEZVOUS (NEAR) MISSION IMAGES OF ASTEROID EROS ITEM 3 - NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES INDUCTS CARRUTHERS INTO ITS PORTRAIT GALLERY (replay) ITEM 4 - STARSHINE TO RE-ENTER EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE IN A BLAZE OF GLORY - GSFC (replay) For Video File Slates and other descriptive information, see: ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/tv-advisory/nasa-tv.txt For the up-to-date NTV Schedule during Space Shuttle mission STS- 99 see: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/nasatv/schedule.html Other Live Television Events This Week: February 17, Thursday * 9:00 - 11:00 am - NASA FY 2001 Budget Posture Hearing Before House Science Committee (tape delayed from 2/16/00) - HQ * 1:00 pm - NEAR Early Science Results Press Briefing - HQ February 18, Friday * 10:30 - Noon - International Space Station: Expedition 2000 (tape delayed from 2/17/00) ----------------------------- Unless otherwise noted, ALL TIMES ARE EASTERN. ANY CHANGES TO THE LINE-UP WILL APPEAR ON THE NASA VIDEO FILE ADVISORY ON THE WEB AT ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/tv-advisory/nasa-tv.txt WE UPDATE THE ADVISORY THROUGHOUT THE DAY. 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 Fred Brown, 202/358-0713, fred.brown@hq.nasa.gov During Space Shuttle missions, the full NASA TV schedule will continue to be posted at: 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