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.


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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



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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



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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



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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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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)



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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/



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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