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                                NASA SPACE NEWS
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  Release: 90-77
  VETERAN ASTRONAUT HAWLEY TO ACCEPT EXECUTIVE POSITION AT AMES

  	Dr. Dale Compton, Director of NASA's Ames Research Center, Mountain
  View, California, today named Astronaut Steven A. Hawley as the Center's
  Associate Director (acting). Hawley will assume his duties on July 29 as 
  the Center's third-ranking executive.

	"We are extremely pleased," Compton said, "to have someone with Dr.
  Hawley's administrative and scientific skills joining us at Ames."

	Hawley, 38, has served as Deputy Chief of the Astronaut Office since
  1987 and most recently as mission specialist aboard the Space Shuttle
  Discovery on mission STS-31 in April of this year.  During that flight, 
  he successfully delivered the Hubble Space Telescope to orbit using 
  Discovery's robot arm and extended his total time in space to over 412
  hours.

	The three-time Shuttle flight veteran was selected as an astronaut
  in 1978. Hawley worked as a simulator pilot in the Shuttle software
  laboratory and on astronaut support crews for Shuttle missions STS-2,
  STS-3 and STS-4 before making his first space flight.

  	He first flew as a mission specialist on the maiden voyage of
  Discovery, STS-41D, in August 1984. Discovery's crew deployed three
  communications satellites and activated the OAST-1 solar cell wing 
  experiment. He made his second trip to orbit aboard Columbia on STS-61C
  in January 1986, during which Hawley participated in the deployment of
  the SATCOM KU satellite and conducted experiments in astrophysics and
  materials processing.