Tomorrow at 1pm EDT, NASA has scheduled a space science update. This one
touts a major new extrasolar discovery. What this almost certainly means is
not that life has been detected outside our own solar system. Much more
likely -- but otherwise I have no idea what they're going to say -- is that
they've improved their experimental resolutions to the point that they can
possibly sense planets that may be only a few times larger than Earth. If
that's true, then the second expected announcement would also be that they've
just increased the number of extrasolar planets found by several times, given
that Earth-size planets ought to at least equal in number the size of the gas
giants, especially among those planets that are close in to their respective
stars.

But all of that is a guess on my part. While the conference won't be
broadcast on NASA TV (meaning that it can't be of all that important), these
conferences are almost always to be found on the web somewhere (space.com is
a good place to look) and I find them very interesting.

Nonetheless, whatever they say, you'll almost certainly hear a very condensed
version of it on the nightly news tomorrow evening. I've enclosed NASA's
announcement below:

Wirt Atmar

PS: For those of you who haven't been keeping up with the rapid recent
progress in extrasolar planet hunting, Geoff Marcy and Paul Butler are the
two guys who revolutionized the field with their improvements in experimental
techniques. They're both on the panel tomorrow.

======================================

Donald Savage
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.                  June 11, 2002
(Phone:  202/358-1547)

Jane Platt
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
(Phone: 818/354/0880)

Robert Sanders
University of California, Berkeley
(Phone: 510/643-6998)

NOTE TO EDITORS: N02-43

SPACE SCIENCE UPDATE: MAJOR EXTRASOLAR DISCOVERY
ANNOUNCEMENT EXPECTED JUNE 13

     The planet-hunting team of Geoff Marcy and Paul Butler
will announce their latest discovery beyond our Solar System
at a Space Science Update at NASA Headquarters in Washington
at 1 p.m. EDT, June 13. Their discovery represents a
significant and much-anticipated advance in this relatively
new field of finding so-called extrasolar planets.

Panelists will be:
*  Dr. Geoffrey Marcy, University of California, Berkeley
*  Dr. R. Paul Butler, Carnegie Institution of Washington in
Washington, D.C., Department of Terrestrial Magnetism
*  Dr. Alycia Weinberger, staff research astronomer at the
Carnegie Institution of Washington Department of Terrestrial
Magnetism
*  Dr. David Spergel, Professor in the Department of
Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University, N.J.
*  Dr. Anne Kinney, the director of the Astronomy and Physics
Division in the Office of Space Science at NASA Headquarters
in Washington, is panel moderator

The Update will originate from the James E. Webb Auditorium
at NASA Headquarters located at 300 E St., S.W. in
Washington.

Because NASA Television will be supporting a spacewalk from
the International Space Station at the time of the news
event, the Space Science Update will be broadcast on Telstar-
5, Transponder-19, 97 degrees West Longitude, vertical
polarization, downlink frequency 12053 MHz, audio 6.2 & 6.8
MHz. There will be two-way question-and-answer capability for
reporters covering the update from participating NASA
centers.
                           -end-

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