ATTENTION: SCIENCE EDITORS, WRITERS

25 November 2002
Contact: Robert Sanders
(510) 643-6998
rls@pa.urel.berkeley.edu

WHAT:
Science briefing by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) about a University of California, Berkeley satellite, the Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer (CHIPSat), scheduled for launch on Dec. 19 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. The briefing also will cover two other satellite missions with December launch dates.

WHEN:
Noon EST (9 a.m. PST) Tuesday, Nov. 26

WHERE:
The briefing at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., will be broadcast live over NASA TV and streamed live through the Web. For details, link to NASA's Web site, http://www.nasa.gov/ntv/breaking.html.

WHO:
Briefing participants and their topics are:

• Dr. Mark Hurwitz, CHIPSat principal investigator, UC Berkeley: CHIPSat Mission Overview
  
• Dr. Ghassem Asrar, associate administrator, NASA Office of Earth Science: Overview of ICESat, ADEOS II, One NASA
  
• Dr. Ann Kinney, director for astronomy and physics, NASA Office of Space Science: Space Science Overview
  
• Dr. Jay Zwally, ICESat project scientist: ICESat Mission Overview
  
• Moshe Pniel, scatterometer projects manager, SeaWinds on ADEOS II: Mission Overview

BACKGROUND:
CHIPSat, carrying a UC Berkeley-built instrument to study the high-energy radiation left over from nearby supernova explosions, is the first and only low-cost UNiversity-class EXplorer (UNEX) mission to be launched by NASA. Originally selected by peer review in late 1998, it will fly underneath the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) aboard a Delta rocket and be kicked into a nearly polar orbit 600 kilometers above Earth.