NASA Hosts Science Update About Gravity Probe B Mission

Trent J. Perrotto

Headquarters, Washington                                        

WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, May 4, to discuss the science results and legacy of the Gravity Probe B (GP-B) mission. The event will be in the NASA Headquarters Webb auditorium at 300 E Street SW in Washington.

GP-B is a NASA physics mission designed to measure two key predictions of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. Einstein predicted that space and time are distorted by the presence of massive objects.

The experiment used four ultra-precise gyroscopes to measure the geodetic effect, which is the warping of space and time by a celestial body like Earth, and frame-dragging, which is the amount a spinning object like Earth pulls space and time with it as it rotates.

Media may attend the event, join by phone or ask questions from participating NASA centers. To RSVP or obtain dial-in information, media must contact Trent Perrotto at trent.j.perrotto@nasa.gov with their name, media affiliation and telephone number by 5 p.m. on May 3. NASA Television and the agency's website will broadcast the event live.

The news conference panelists are:

-- Bill Danchi, senior astrophysicist and program scientist, NASA Headquarters, Washington

-- Francis Everitt, principal investigator on Gravity Probe B Mission, Stanford University,

-- Rex Geveden, president Teledyne Brown Engineering, Inc., Huntsville, Ala.

-- Colleen Hartman, senior advisor, NASA Headquarters and research professor, George Washington University

-- Clifford Will, professor of Physics, Washington University, St. Louis

For NASA TV streaming video and downlink information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/ntv.

For more information about Gravity Probe B, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/gpb and http://einstein.stanford.edu/.

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