Jul 28 2011
From The Space Library
MEDIA ADVISORY: M11-155 PENULTIMATE SPACE SHUTTLE CREW DISCUSSES RECENT MISSION
WASHINGTON -- The last crew to fly aboard space shuttle Endeavour will discuss its mission to the International Space Station -- the penultimate flight of the shuttle program. The astronauts of the STS-134 flight and three members of the station's Expedition 26 crew will be in the Washington area on Thursday, Aug. 4. Mark Kelly commanded the STS-134 mission and was joined by Pilot Greg H. Johnson and Mission Specialists Mike Fincke, Drew Feustel, Greg Chamitoff and European Space Agency astronaut Roberto Vittori. The astronauts completed a 16-day mission to the station in June. The shuttle crew members will give a presentation to NASA employees about their 16-day mission at 10 a.m. EDT at NASA Headquarters' James E. Webb Auditorium, located at 300 E St. SW in Washington. The presentation will air live on NASA Television and the agency's website. Both crews will be available for media interviews from 1 to 2 p.m. Expedition 26 Commander Scott Kelly and Flight Engineers Cady Coleman and European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli also will be available to news media representatives. Later that day, NASA and the Maryland Space Grant Consortium invite the public to a discussion with Mark Kelly, Johnson, Fincke and Vittori at 6:30 p.m. at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The astronauts will share their video presentation and answer questions from the audience at the Bloomberg Center for Physics and Astronomy's Schafler Auditorium. Free parking is available in the Muller parking deck on San Martin Drive, adjacent to Bloomberg. The STS-134 crew delivered the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS) to the space station. AMS, a particle physics detector, searches for various types of unusual matter by measuring cosmic rays. Its experiments are helping researchers study the formation of the universe and search for evidence of dark matter, strange matter and antimatter. The mission also flew the Expedite the Processing of Experiment to Space Station (Express) Logistics Carrier 3 (ELC-3), a platform that carries spare parts that will sustain space station operations now that the shuttles have been retired from service. During the mission's four spacewalks, astronauts conducted maintenance work and installed new station components. They were the last spacewalks by shuttle crew members.
MEDIA ADVISORY: M11-160 UPDATE -- NEW EVENT TIME NASA TO UNVEIL VESTA IMAGES AT NEWS CONFERENCE
WASHINGTON -- NASA will host a news conference on Monday, Aug. 1, at noon EDT, to discuss the Dawn spacecraft's successful orbit insertion around Vesta on July 15 and unveil the first full-frame images from Dawn's framing camera. The news conference will be held in the Von Karman auditorium at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena, Calif. NASA Television and the agency's website will broadcast the event. The news conference panelists are: -- Colleen Hartman, assistant associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington -- Charles Elachi, director, JPL -- Marc Rayman, chief engineer and mission manager, JPL -- Christopher Russell, Dawn principal investigator, University of California, Los Angeles -- Holger Sierks, framing camera team member, Max Planck Society, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany -- Enrico Flamini, chief scientist, Italian Space Agency (ASI), Rome, Italy Although Dawn is collecting some science data now, the mission's intensive collection of information will begin in early August. Observations of the giant asteroid Vesta will provide unprecedented data to help scientists understand the earliest chapter of our solar system. Dawn is the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. After spending one year orbiting Vesta, Dawn will travel to a second destination, the dwarf planet Ceres, and arrive there in February 2015.
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