NASA Connects Atlanta Students to Astronauts on Space Station

WASHINGTON -- Students from the Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Atlanta will participate in an out-of-this-world learning experience on Tuesday, May 5, when they receive a call from astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The downlink will air live worldwide on NASA Television and also be available on NASA's Web site. This is the second event of its kind to be held in the state of Georgia.

A live in-flight education downlink with the crew will take place between 11:15 a.m. and 11:35 a.m. EDT at the Fernbank Science Center in Dekalb County. The 20-minute question-and-answer event will feature astronauts Mike Barratt and Koichi Wakata, who are flight engineers aboard the Expedition 19 mission to the station.

Students and teachers are preparing for the downlink by visiting the NASA Web site to learn about the station, crew members, mission objectives and science experiments. Following the event, students will engage in hands-on activities, such as a robotic space mission challenge and rocket building.

NASA's education downlinks support the agency's efforts to encourage students to study and pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM. These events, which NASA's Teaching from Space Office facilitate, use the unique experience of human spaceflight to promote and enhance STEM education.

Fernbank Science Center is part of NASA's Science, Engineering, Mathematics and Aerospace Academy program known as SEMAA. SEMAA is a national, innovative project designed to increase participation and retention of historically underserved and underrepresented kindergarten through 12th grade youth in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

"We're excited about this extraordinary learning experience to inspire SEMAA students' interest in STEM careers," said Jo Ann Charleston, chief of the Educational Programs Office at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. "Stimulating interest in these disciplines helps NASA develop the next generation of scientists and engineers who will take us back to the moon, on to Mars and beyond."

For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and scheduling information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For information about NASA's education programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/education

For information about NASA's Science, Engineering, Mathematics and Aerospace Academy, visit:



http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/education/SEMAA_GRC.html

Former Space Station Astronauts Available for Live TV Interviews

HOUSTON -- NASA astronauts Mike Fincke and Sandra Magnus, who recently returned to Earth after several months living aboard the International Space Station, will be available for television interviews via satellite Thursday, April 30.

Fincke, a Pittsburgh-area native, will be available for live interviews from 6 a.m. to 7:25 a.m. CDT April 30. He commanded the Expedition 18 mission, during which the station began water supply recycling and gained a full power supply from four solar arrays. He spent 178 days in orbit and conducted two spacewalks. Combined with the 187 days he served as an Expedition 9 flight engineer in 2004, Fincke has accumulated a year in space during his career.

Magnus, from Belleville, Ill., near St. Louis, will be available for live interviews from 7:35 a.m. to 9 a.m. April 30. She was an Expedition 18 flight engineer for 129 days, returning to Earth on March 28. During her mission, Magnus wrote journal entries, which included details on her efforts to spice up traditional space food. Her entries are available at:

http://www.nasa.gov/sandymagnusjournals

To participate in the interviews, reporters should contact Derek Sollosi by phone at 713-884-5845 or by e-mail at derek.sollosi-1@nasa.gov before noon Wednesday, April 29. Expedition 18 b-roll feeds will air immediately following each set of interviews at 5:30 a.m. and 7:25 a.m.

The NASA Live Interview Media Outlet channel will be used for the interviews. The channel is a digital satellite C-band downlink by uplink provider Americom. It is on satellite AMC 6, transponder 5C, located at 72 degrees west, downlink frequency 3785.5 Mhz based on a standard C-band 5150 Mhz L.O., vertical polarity, FEC is 3/4, data rate is 6.00 Mhz, symbol rate is 4.3404 Mbaud, transmission DVB, minimum Eb/N0 is 6.0 dB.

The interviews also will be broadcast live on NASA Television. For streaming video, downlink and scheduling information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For more information about the International Space Station, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

For more information about the space shuttle, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

New Astronaut Crew Launches to ISS (International Space Station)

HOUSTON - The 19th crew to live and work aboard the International Space Station launched into orbit Thursday morning from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, aboard a Soyuz spacecraft. NASA astronaut Michael Barratt, Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, and spaceflight participant and U.S. software engineer Charles Simonyi lifted off at 6:49 a.m. CDT.

They are scheduled to dock with the station at 8:14 a.m. Saturday, March 28. Padalka will serve as commander of Expeditions 19 and 20 aboard the station. Barratt will serve as a flight engineer for those two missions. Padalka and Barratt's other crewmate is Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. He arrived to the station March 17 on space shuttle Discovery.

Simonyi, flying to the station under a commercial agreement with the Russian Federal Space Agency, previously visited the complex in April 2007. He is the first spaceflight participant to make a second flight to the station and will spend 10 days aboard. Simonyi will return to Earth April 7 with Expedition 18 Commander Michael Fincke and Flight Engineer Yury Lonchakov, who have been on the station since October 2008.

The Expedition 19 crew will continue science investigations and prepare for the arrival of the rest of the station's first six-person contingent. Roman Romanenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency, Frank De Winne of the European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Bob Thirsk will launch from Baikonur on May 27, arriving at the station on May 29. After all the astronauts are aboard, Expedition 20 will begin, ushering in an era of six-person station crews. This mission also will be the first time the crew members represent all five International Space Station partners.

For more information about the space station and how to view it from Earth, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

Space Station and Shuttle Crews Hold News Conference From Space

HOUSTON - The 10 crew members aboard International Space Station and the space shuttle Discovery will hold a news conference at 12:08 p.m. CDT on Tuesday, March 24.

U.S. reporters may ask questions in person from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Headquarters in Washington. Questions also will be taken from Russian reporters at Mission Control, Moscow, and Japanese reporters at Johnson.

To participate in the news conference, U.S. journalists must call the public affairs office at their preferred NASA center by 1 p.m. Monday. Media must be in place at participating locations at least 20 minutes prior to the start of the news conference.
NASA Television will provide live coverage of the 40-minute news conference. For NASA TV downlink, schedule and streaming video information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

During Discovery's STS-119 mission, the crews are installing the final set of solar arrays to fully power science experiments and support the station's expanded crew of six in May.

For more information about the STS-119 mission and its crew, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

For more information about the space station and its crew, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/station

NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for Four Missions

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA has selected United Launch Alliance of Littleton, Colo., for the launch of two Science Mission Directorate and two Space Operations Mission Directorate payloads under the NASA Launch Services contract.

The launches will occur on Atlas V expendable launch vehicles. The total value of the award is approximately $600 million, which includes the launch services for the rockets, plus additional services under other contracts for payload processing, launch vehicle integration, and tracking, data and telemetry support.

The launches will be from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. The four payloads are the Radiation Belt Storm Probes mission, the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, and the Tracking and Data Relay Satellites K and L, or TDRS-K and TDRS-L, missions.

Planned for launch in 2011, the NASA Radiation Belt Storm Probes mission uses two almost identical spacecraft built by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. For two years, the twin probes will study the radiation belts surrounding Earth to improve our understanding of how the sun's changing energy flow affects them.

Two new Tracking and Data Relay satellites will be launched, TDRS-K and TDRS-L, to replenish the NASA communications relay network that provides voice, data, video and telemetry links between spacecraft below geosynchronous orbit and the ground. Among the major users of the relay network are the International Space Station and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The launches are planned for 2012 and 2013.

The Magnetospheric Multiscale mission is a NASA space physics research effort to discover the fundamental plasma physics processes of magnetic reconnection that occurs when energy emanating from the sun's solar wind interacts with the Earth's magnetic field. Four identical satellites will be launched together in a stacked configuration. They will fly in an elliptical orbit around Earth. The Magnetospheric Multiscale Project is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., under a contract with the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. The launch is planned for 2014.

NASA's Launch Services Program at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida manages launch services, including payload integration and certifying launch vehicles, for NASA's use.

For more information about NASA and its missions, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

NASA TV to air Tuesday's Space Station Spacewalk

HOUSTON -- NASA Television will provide live coverage of the March 10 spacewalk of Expedition 18 Commander Mike Fincke and Flight Engineer Yury Lonchakov. The pair will complete unfinished work from their December 2008 excursion outside the orbiting laboratory.

Fincke and Lonchakov will don Russian spacesuits for the spacewalk out of the Russian Pirs Docking Compartment airlock. Flight Engineer Sandra Magnus will monitor the spacewalk from inside the station. It will be the sixth spacewalk of Fincke's career and the second for Lonchakov.

NASA TV coverage of the spacewalk will begin at 11 a.m. CDT Tuesday. The spacewalk will start at approximately 11:20 a.m. and last five and a half hours.

The centerpiece of the spacewalk will be the installation of a European materials science experiment, which allows short and long-term exposure to space conditions and solar UV-radiation, on the hull of the Zvezda service module. The experiment, known as Expose, was installed on Zvezda during the December spacewalk but had to be removed and brought back inside the station because of a cable problem. That problem has been repaired.

For information about NASA TV streaming video, downlink and schedule information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For more information about the space station and the Expedition 18 crew, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station