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From: yee@trident.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: NASA selects payload specialists for Spacelab mission (Forwarded)
Message-ID: <1991May2.191723.16915@news.arc.nasa.gov>
Date: 2 May 91 19:17:23 GMT
Sender: usenet@news.arc.nasa.gov (USENET Administration)
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
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Michael Braukus
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.                   	May 2, 1991
(Phone:   202/453-1549)

David Drachlis
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
(Phone:  205/544-0034)


RELEASE:  91-66

NASA SELECTS PAYLOAD SPECIALISTS FOR SPACELAB MISSION

	The National Aeronautics and Space Administration today
announced the selection of Dr. Lawrence J. DeLucas of the University of
Alabama at Birmingham and Dr. Eugene H. Trinh of the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., to fly as payload specialists on the
first U.S. Microgravity Laboratory mission.  USML-1 is a 13- day
Spacelab mission scheduled for flight aboard the Space Shuttle in June
1992.

	Dr. DeLucas, 40, earned a doctorate of optometry in 1981 and
a Ph.D in biochemistry in 1982 from the University of Alabama at
Birmingham.  He holds several positions at the university including
Associate Director of the Center for Macromolecular Crystallography,
Professor in the Department of Optometry and Adjunct Professor in the
Laboratory of Medical Genetics.

	Dr. Trinh, of Culver City, Calif., earned a Ph.D in applied
physics from Yale in 1978.  He is a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory.  The 40-year-old Trinh previously was an alternate payload
specialist for Spacelab 3, a microgravity mission which flew aboard the
Space Shuttle in 1985.  As an alternate, he served as a back-up to the
flight payload specialists and played a key role in the control center
during the mission.

	For the first U.S. Microgravity Laboratory mission, NASA has
designated Dr.  Joseph Prahl of Case Western Reserve
University,Cleveland, and Dr. Albert Sacco, Jr., of Worchester
Polytechnic Institute, Mass., to serve as alternates to DeLucas and
Trinh.

	During the mission, Trinh and DeLucas will conduct more than
30 scientific and technological investigations in materials, fluids and
biological processes in the orbiting laboratory.  They will be
supported by Prahl and Sacco who will serve as key control team members
in the Spacelab Mission Operations Control facility at the Marshall
Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.  The U.S. Microgravity Laboratory
series of Spacelab missions is being managed by the Marshall center.