May 22 2017

From The Space Library

MEDIA ADVISORY M17-056 NASA to Discuss FY2018 Budget Proposal, Provide Virtual Tours of Centers

NASA will hold a series of events Tuesday, May 23, highlighting the agency’s Fiscal Year 2018 budget proposal, including a televised State of NASA address by acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot and Facebook Live virtual tours of NASA’s 10 centers, where innovation is enabling exploration and discovery.

Lightfoot will give a presentation at 12:30 p.m. EDT to NASA employees at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington on FY2018 budget highlights, setting the stage for the coming year at NASA and spotlighting the past work that led to current achievements. This presentation will air live on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

At 1:30 p.m., NASA's social media team will take visitors behind the scenes for a virtual tour of NASA and a look at the cutting-edge work here and on humanity's destiny in deep space. These Facebook Live events will be hosted on each center's Facebook page and will run about 15 minutes each. The following list of virtual tours includes times, centers and highlights of each tour:

• 1:30 p.m. -- Glenn Research Center, in Cleveland, will host a tour of its Electric Propulsion Lab, where the agency tests solar propulsion technologies that are critical to powering spacecraft for NASA’s deep-space missions.
• 1:50 p.m. -- Marshall Space Flight Center, in Huntsville, Alabama, will host a tour from a Marshall test stand where structural loads testing is performed on parts of NASA's Space Launch System rocket.
• 2:10 p.m. -- Stennis Space Center, in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, will take visitors on a tour of their test stands to learn about rocket engine testing from their Test Control Center.
• 2:30 p.m. -- Armstrong Flight Research Center, in Edwards, California, will host a tour from their aircraft hangar and Simulator Lab to learn about NASA’s X-Planes program.
• 2:50 p.m. -- Johnson Space Center in Houston will take viewers on a virtual exploration trip through the mockups of the International Space Station and inside the agency’s deep-space exploration vehicle, the Orion spacecraft.
• 3:10 p.m. -- Ames Research Center, in California’s Silicon Valley, will bring viewers into its Arc Jet Facility, a plasma wind tunnel used to simulate the extreme heat of spacecraft atmospheric entry.
• 3:30 p.m. -- Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, will bring visitors inside the Vehicle Assembly Building to learn about how NASA is preparing for the first launch of America's next big rocket, SLS.
• 3:50 p.m. -- Langley Research Center, in Hampton Virginia, will bring visitors inside its 14-by-22-foot wind tunnel, where aerodynamic projects are tested.
• 4:10 p.m. -- Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Maryland, will discuss the upcoming United States total solar eclipse and host its tour from the Space Weather Lab, a large multi-screen room where data from the sun is analyzed and studied.
• 4:30 p.m. -- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, California, will bring viewers to the Spacecraft Assembly Facility to learn about robotic exploration of the solar system.

Also on Tuesday, at 5 p.m. NASA’s acting Chief Financial Officer Andrew Hunter will brief media on the agency’s 2018 budget proposal. To participate in this briefing, media must contact Karen Northon in the NASA Headquarters newsroom at 202-358-1540 or karen.northon@nasa.gov no later than 4 p.m. Tuesday.

MEDIA ADVISORY M17-059 NASA to Discuss First Science Results from Juno Mission to Jupiter

Scientists from NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter will discuss their first in-depth science results in a media teleconference at 2 p.m. EDT Thursday, May 25, when multiple papers with early findings will be published online by the journal Science and Geophysical Research Letters.

The teleconference participants are:

• Diane Brown, program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington
• Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio
• Jack Connerney, deputy principal investigator at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland
• Heidi Becker, Juno radiation monitoring investigation lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California
• Candy Hansen, Juno co-investigator at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona

To participate in the teleconference, media must email their name and affiliation to Laurie Cantillo at laura.l.cantillo@nasa.gov by noon Thursday. Media and the public also may ask questions during the briefing on Twitter using #askNASA.

Juno launched on Aug. 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, and arrived in orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016. In its current exploration mission, Juno soars low over the planet's cloud tops, as close as about 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers). During these flybys, Juno probes beneath the obscuring cloud cover of Jupiter and studies its auroras to learn more about the planet's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.

MEDIA ADVISORY M17-060 NASA TV Coverage Set for May 23 Space Station Contingency Spacewalk

NASA astronauts Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer are preparing for an unscheduled spacewalk outside the International Space Station Tuesday, May 23. Live coverage will begin at 6:30 a.m. EDT on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

Whitson, Expedition 51 commander, and Fischer, flight engineer, will replace a critical computer relay box that failed May 20. The relay box, known as a multiplexer-demultiplexer (MDM), is one of two units that regulate the operation of radiators, solar arrays and cooling loops. They also route commands to other vital station systems.

Because each MDM is capable of performing the critical station functions, the crew on the station is in no danger and station operations are not affected.

The failed relay box was installed in the space station truss March 30 during a spacewalk by Whitson and Expedition 50 commander Shane Kimbrough. Whitson prepared a spare data relay box May 21, and tested components installed in the replacement. She reported the spare MDM is ready to be brought outside to replace the failed unit.

The spacewalk to replace the failed box is planned to last about 2.5 hours. While Whitson is replacing the MDM, Fischer will install a pair of antennas on the U.S. Destiny Laboratory module to enhance wireless communication capability for future spacewalks.

The spacewalk will be the 201st in support of space station assembly and maintenance, the sixth spacewalk conducted from the Quest airlock this year, the 10th for Whitson and the second for Fischer.

Whitson, who already is the leading female spacewalker in history, will be designated extravehicular crew member 1 (EV-1) wearing a suit with red stripes. Fischer will be designated as EV-2, wearing a suit with no stripes.