October 20, 1997

 

In a return visit to Huntsville, Bill Nye the Science Guy will visit the NASA/Marshall Space Sciences Laboratory October 20-22, to video segments for an upcoming show. Included in Nye's visit, sponsored by the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, will be videography on aerogel, a material being researched by SSL scientists and which will be used to sample the tail of a comet on NASA's upcoming Stardust mission.

 

Nye will also video segments involving SSL's Ultraviolet Imaging Experiment and its observations of Comet Hale-Bopp, tape a segment using the Burst and Transient Source Detector (BATSE) and its observations of gamma-rays from terrestrial thunderstorms, use the Solar Vector Magnetograph Facility at NASA/Marshall, and inspect meteorite samples belonging to the Von Braun Astronomical Society.

During Nye's last visit to Huntsville, in October 1996, segments for episode #82, "Space Exploration," were shot using the laboratory's BATSE instrument, as well as the NASA/Marshall Neutral Buoyancy Simulator (now decommissioned). Each episode may air as many as 15 or 20 times over public television stations, and on Saturday mornings over for-profit broadcast stations.

---

 

Author: Dave Dooling
Curator: Bryan Walls
NASA Official: John M. Horack