Brian Dunbar

Headquarters, Washington, D.C. January 17, 1991

(Phone: 202/453-1547)

Jerry Berg
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
(Phone: 205/544-6540)

RELEASE: 91-9

CRRES EXPERIMENTS CONTINUE AFTER FOUR SUCCESSES

The Combined Release and Radiation Effects Satellite (CRRES)

is
scheduled to resume experiments early Friday morning following four
successful chemical releases in the last week. The next release
opportunities will be for either a lithium or large barium release
early Friday morning, with possible times of 12:20 a.m., 12:50
a.m.,
1:20 a.m., 1:40 a.m. and 1:55 a.m. EST. Weather permitting, the
release will be visible in the south-southeastern sky, slightly
more
than halfway between the horizon and the zenith.

The CRRES releases aid scientists studying the way that

charged
particles interact with the Earth's magnetic and electric fields by
creating artificial auroras. Natural auroras occur when
high-energy
particles from the sun strike the Earth's upper atmosphere.
Understanding the Earth's magnetic field is important because
disturbances in the field, such as those that create natural
auroras, can disrupt high-frequency communications, produce
damaging
currents in terrestrial power systems and create magnetic storms
that affect sensitive instruments on Earth and in space.

Last weekend, one release each of barium and lithium were

performed, and two more barium experiments were completed Monday
night and early Wednesday morning.
 "The chemical release operations went off without a hitch
during these opportunities," said Dr. David Reasoner, CRRES project
scientist at the Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
"The satellite and the U.S. Air Force satellite control facility
have performed flawlessly. The optical instruments at the
observing
sites were pointed precisely at the release."
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The current CRRES chemical release "campaign" involves seven

planned releases, with four opportunities to make the remaining
three releases through Jan. 24. Late Saturday night and early
Sunday morning, two releases were completed as scheduled. Cloudy
weather over much of the United States did not permit the glowing
barium and lithium gas clouds to be seen from the ground, but a
more
than sufficient number of observation stations in North America and
the Caribbean were able to provide good observation support for the
experiments.

The 3.3-lb. barium release at 9:17 p.m. EST Saturday resulted

in a cloud that glowed bright green initially and then changed to a
dimmer purplish-blue as the barium atoms ionized upon exposure to
sunlight.

At 2:05 a.m. Sunday morning, the 1.6-lb. lithium release

produced a red glow in the night sky, with observers estimating its
size as approximately the diameter of the full moon and remaining
visible for a few seconds. Its apparent brightness was relatively
dim because of the human eye's low response in the red region of
the
spectrum, Reasoner said. Nevertheless, the cloud was reported, for
its brief duration, to be the brightest object in the sky, he
added. The lithium release was timed to coincide with certain
positions of CRRES and NASA's Dynamics Explorer-1 satellite as well
as the Japanese AKEBONO satellite. All three satellites have
instruments for detecting the artificially injected lithium ions.

The Monday night barium release occurred at 11:11 p.m. EST.

Afterward, Reasoner hailed the operation, saying, "We believe we
have accomplished a significant experiment. Excellent optical data
were obtained from many sites, with one particular site tracking
the
barium ions for two hours."

The fourth barium release took place at 1:25 a.m. EST

Wednesday
morning.

Given clear weather, remaining releases should be visible from

the entire continental United States, most of Canada, Central
America, the Caribbean and much of South America. During some of
the release opportunities, the clouds may be visible low in the
western skies from western Africa and Europe, several hours before
dawn.

For current information about upcoming release opportunities,

the CRRES Coordination Center "hotline" message may be heard by
calling 205/544-5356. This is not a toll-free number.

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CRRES is a joint program of NASA, through its Marshall Space

Flight Center and the Department of Defense's Space Test Program.
CRRES is operated and controlled from the Air Force's Consolidated
Space Test Center, Sunnyvale, Calif.

- end -

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