For Release: August 7, 1995

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

RELEASE: 95-50N

HUNTSVILLE SCIENTIST SET FOR SHUTTLE FLIGHT THIS FALL

Dr. Fred Leslie, a researcher at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., will fly aboard the Space Shuttle this fall and conduct a variety of scientific investigations aboard Columbia, working in the orbiting laboratory facility known as Spacelab.

He will serve as a payload specialist crew member on the second United States Microgravity Laboratory (USML-2) mission, a planned 16-day Shuttle flight.

Media will have an opportunity to talk to Leslie about his role in the upcoming STS-73 mission, its scientific objectives, and his preparations for the flight, at 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 8. Leslie will be at Marshall's Payload Crew Training Complex for his last planned session of Spacelab training prior to the launch of Columbia, currently targeted for late September.

Dr. Leslie, 43, earned a Ph.D. in atmospheric science with a minor in fluid dynamics from the University of Oklahoma. He has worked at the Marshall Center since 1980, specializing in fluid dynamics, Earth system processes and modeling. He became chief of the Fluid Dynamics Branch of Marshall's Space Sciences Laboratory in 1987, and was mission scientist for the Spacelab J Shuttle mission (1992), coordinating more than 40 U.S. and Japanese experiments.

Leslie's other interests include skydiving -- he was a participant in the world record-setting, 200-person freefall event of October 1992 -- and flying. He is an instrument-rated commercial pilot with more than 900 hours in various aircraft.

During the USML-2 mission, Leslie and other crew members will conduct a variety of scientific and technological experiments focused in areas including materials science, biotechnology, combustion science, and the physics of fluids.

Media wishing to interview Leslie should come to the Marshall Center Public Affairs Office, Room 111 of Bldg. 4200, by 12:45 p.m. Tuesday. Those familiar with the location of the Payload Crew Training Complex (B-4612) may go directly to that building