NASA Daily News Summary
For Release:  June 8, 2000
Media Advisory m00-113


SUMMARY


NEWS RELEASES

  None today.



STATUS REPORT

  NEAR TEAM DEACTIVATES SPACECRAFT'S NEAR-INFRARED SENSOR



VIDEO

  ***ALL TIMES EASTERN***


  VIDEO FILE FOR JUNE 8, 2000

    ITEM 1 - SOHO CAPTURES IMAGES OF INCOMING SOLAR STORM - JSC
    ITEM 2 - NASA DEVELOPS ELECTRONIC NOSE - JPL (REPLAY)
    ITEM 3 - CGRO DEORBIT PACKAGE - GSFC (REPLAY)


  UPCOMING TELEVISION EVENTS



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NEWS RELEASES


None today.



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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



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STATUS REPORT


June 7, 2000

NEAR Team Deactivates Spacecraft's Near-Infrared Sensor

One of NEAR Shoemaker's six scientific instruments has been turned
off after the NEAR mission team detected a power surge in the
device.

During routine operations on May 13, the Near-Infrared
Spectrometer (NIS) inexplicably began drawing excessive current
from the spacecraft's power supply and stopped sending data.
Engineers shut down the instrument and spent several days
examining potential causes, but after a minute-long "turn on" test
June 5 showed the problem remained, the NEAR team opted to keep
the instrument off until it could gather more information.

Robert Gold, NEAR Shoemaker payload manager at the Johns Hopkins
University Applied Physics Laboratory – which manages the mission
for NASA – says the spacecraft itself is fine and that "NEAR
Shoemaker's other instruments are operating extremely well."

Designed to map the mineral composition of the asteroid's surface
by measuring the reflected spectrum of sunlight, NIS has already
contributed much to this historic mission. Its best data came from
a low-angle flyby of Eros on Feb. 13, when it mapped the minerals
on the asteroid's northern hemisphere under near-perfect lighting
conditions. So far, the instrument has gathered more than 58,000
"spectra" – or separate infrared readings – covering more than 60
percent of the asteroid.

"We have a fantastic data set because, to this point, the
instrument has operated beautifully," says Joseph Veverka, of
Cornell University, who leads NEAR's Multispectral Imager/NIS
team. "We have a vast number of spectra to analyze, and we
gathered everything and more than we expected from the northern
hemisphere."

That information will help the team examine Eros' southern
hemisphere, which over the next few months will slowly emerge from
the shadows and into the sunlit view of NEAR Shoemaker's imaging
tools. "It appears the surface is pretty uniform in terms of
spectral reflectance," Veverka says. "By correlating the NIS data
from the northern hemisphere with what we gather from the
Multispectral Imager [digital camera] and the X-ray/Gamma-Ray
Spectrometers [which detect surface elements], we should be able
to address the remaining questions of how different the south
polar regions are from what we've already seen."

Four months after becoming the first spacecraft to orbit an
asteroid, NEAR Shoemaker is working 85 million miles (136 million
kilometers) from Earth, circling 31 miles (50 kilometers) above
Eros at just under 7 miles per hour. On July 7, the spacecraft
begins moving in for its closest look at Eros yet – a 10-day orbit
just 22 miles (35 kilometers) from the rotating space rock. NEAR
Shoemaker also carries a Laser Rangefinder to determine the
asteroid's precise shape, and a Magnetometer to search for a
magnetic field. The yearlong mission ends in February 2001.



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UPCOMING TELEVISION EVENTS

June 8, Thursday
- 6:00 - 10:30 a.m. - Lightning Research Live News Interviews -
  MSFC
- 4:30 - 9:00 p.m. - Electronic Nose Live News Interview - JPL

June 10, Saturday
- 9:00 - 10:00 a.m. - That NASA Show:  "Space Clothes" and
  "Tortillas in Space" - HQ
- 10:00 - 11:00 a.m. - That NASA Show:  "Space Clothes" and
  "Tortillas in Space" - HQ
- 11:00 a.m. - Noon - That NASA Show:  "Space Clothes" and
  "Tortillas in Space" - HQ

June 11, Sunday
- 9:00 - 10:00 a.m. - That NASA Show:  "Space Clothes" and
  "Tortillas in Space" - HQ
- 10:00 - 11:00 a.m. - That NASA Show:  "Space Clothes" and
  "Tortillas in Space" - HQ
- 11:00 a.m. - Noon - That NASA Show:  "Space Clothes" and
  "Tortillas in Space" - HQ

For a complete list of upcoming live television events, see
http://www.nasa.gov/ntv/breaking.html



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Unless otherwise noted, ALL TIMES ARE EASTERN.

ANY CHANGES TO THE VIDEO 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/



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Contract Awards

Contract awards are posted to the NASA Acquisition information
Service Web site: http://procurement.nasa.gov/EPS/award.html



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end of daily news summary