NASA News: NASA Deputy Administrator Visits Interns From Ball Aerospace And United Launch Alliance In Colorado

WASHINGTON -- NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver will visit Ball
Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., on Tuesday, July
26, to meet with summer interns from Ball and United Launch Alliance
(ULA). Garver will view demonstrations of student-built rockets and
payloads and discuss how hands-on experience for students is critical
to developing experience for science and technology-related jobs of the future.

Reporters are invited to attend the demonstration and speak with
Garver at 2:30 p.m. PDT on Tuesday. Those wishing to attend should
contact Roz Brown at 303-533-6059 or rbrown@ball.com to be badged and
escorted to the event's location.

Over the last seven weeks, more than 100 high school and college
interns built the high-power rockets and a variety of multi-faceted
payloads as part of their experience at the two companies. This is
the third year the Ball Intern Rocket Scientist Team (BIRST) has
partnered with ULA to offer students a chance to work through an
entire program's life cycle from design to launch. The students will
launch six student-built rockets with 20 payloads on July 30. Four of
those payloads were built by the BIRST participants.

All the rockets were built by ULA summer interns -- dubbed SPIRIT (Sky
Piercing Intern Rock-It Team) -- in Denver, Decatur, Ala., Harlingen,
Texas, Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and Cape Canaveral,
Fla. This is the fourth year ULA interns have built and launched
high-power rockets as a summer project.

Ball Aerospace works with NASA on many critical science missions,
including the James Webb Space Telescope and the NPOESS Preparatory
Project satellite, scheduled to launch on Oct. 25. United Launch
Alliance partners with NASA to launch payloads to space, including
the Aug. 5 launch of the Juno mission to Jupiter. ULA and NASA
recently signed a new agreement to share data on the potential for
human rating a ULA Atlas V launch vehicle as part of the Commercial
Crew Development program.

For information on the United Launch Alliance, visit:

http://www.ulalaunch.com

For more information about Ball, visit:

http://www.ballaerospace.com

For information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

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NASA Announces Launch Tweetup For GRAIL Moon Mission

WASHINGTON -- NASA will host a two-day launch Tweetup for 150 of its
Twitter followers on Sept. 7-8 at the agency's Kennedy Space Center
in Florida. The Tweetup is expected to culminate in the launch of the
twin lunar-bound GRAIL spacecraft aboard a Delta II rocket from Cape
Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The launch window opens at 8:37 a.m. EDT on Sept. 8. The two GRAIL
spacecraft will fly in tandem orbits around the moon for several
months to measure its gravity field, from its crust to core, in
unprecedented detail. The mission also will answer longstanding
questions about the moon and provide scientists with a better
understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar
system formed.

The Tweetup will provide NASA's Twitter followers with the opportunity
to tour the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex; speak with
scientists and engineers from GRAIL and other upcoming missions; and,
if all goes as scheduled, view the spacecraft launch. The event also
will provide participants the opportunity to meet fellow tweeps and
members of NASA's social media team.

2011 is one of the busiest ever in planetary exploration; GRAIL's lift
off is the third of four space missions launching this year under the
management of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Aquarius launched June 10 to study ocean salinity; Juno will launch
Aug. 5 to study the origins and interior of Jupiter; and the Mars
Science Laboratory/Curiosity rover heads to the Red Planet no earlier
than Nov. 25.

Tweetup registration opens at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, July 26, and closes
at noon on Thursday, July 28. NASA will randomly select 150
participants from online registrations.

For more information and rules about the Tweetup and registration, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/tweetup

To follow NASA on Twitter, visit:

http://www.twitter.com/NASA

For information about more ways to connect and collaborate with NASA, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/connect

GRAIL's principal investigator is Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Cambridge. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in Pasadena, Calif., manages the mission. For more information about
GRAIL, visit:

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/grail

http://moon.mit.edu/

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NASA Briefing To Preview Upcoming Mission To Jupiter

CAPE CANVAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA will hold a news briefing at 1 p.m. EDT
on Wednesday, July 27, at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in
Florida to discuss preparations for the upcoming Juno mission to
Jupiter. The briefing will be carried live on NASA Television and the
agency's website.

Juno, scheduled to launch Aug. 5, will improve our understanding of
our solar system's beginnings by revealing the origin and evolution
of Jupiter. Juno will get closer to Jupiter than any other spacecraft
and will provide images and the first detailed glimpse of its poles.

Briefing participants are:
-- Jim Green, director, Planetary Science Division, Science Mission
Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington
-- Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator, Southwest Research
Institute, San Antonio
-- Jan Chodas, Juno project manager, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL),
Pasadena, Calif.
-- Steve Levin, Juno project scientist, JPL
-- Kaelyn Badura, Pine Ridge High School, Deltona, Fla.; high school
student, Juno Education program participant and Goldstone Apple
Valley Radio Telescope Project

U.S. media without permanent Kennedy accreditation need to apply for
credentials by 4 p.m. on Tuesday, July 26. New accreditation for
international journalists is closed. Credentialing requests should be
submitted online at:

https://media.ksc.nasa.gov

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

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For more information about Juno, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/juno

Ustream will carry the briefing live with a chat box available at:

http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2

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