Sen. Mikulski, NASA Administrator Bolden to View Progress at Wallops Flight Facility

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Apr 29, 2016, 02:27 ET

WASHINGTON, April 29, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia will host Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and agency Administrator Charles Bolden on Tuesday, May 3, for an employee town hall and tour. The tour will include a stop at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport's Pad 0A, where preparations are underway to conduct a hot fire test of Orbital ATK's Antares rocket in preparation for returning the rocket to flight operations this summer.

Media are invited to join the launch pad visit, employee town hall, and brief media question and answer session at the end. For accreditation, media must contact Wallops News Chief Keith Koehler at 757-824-1579 or [email protected] no later than 3 p.m. EDT Monday, May 2. Media must arrive at Wallops by 10 a.m. for the tour.

Mikulski and Bolden will be joined by William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations at NASA Headquarters, Chris Scolese, director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Maryland, Wallops Director Bill Wrobel, and others.

Dale Nash, executive director of the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority, will lead the tour of Pad 0A, which provides NASA the capability to launch Orbital ATK's Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft on resupply missions to the International Space Station. A medium-class launch facility completed in 2012, it was the result of a joint effort among NASA, the Commonwealth of Virginia through Virginia Space, and Orbital ATK.

For information about Wallops, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/wallops

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SOURCE NASA