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NEWS TIP SHEET Wildfire John Daily, professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Joint Center for Combustion and Environmental Research, can offer insight into wildfire behavior - how fires start and end, how they spread, and the effects of weather and fuel types. He can be reached at (303) 492-7110 or john.daily@colorado.edu .

NASA's Cassini-Huygens spacecraft carrying a $12.5 million University of Colorado at Boulder instrument package is expected to enter Saturn's orbit June 30, beginning a four-year mission to probe the planet, its fabulous ring system and bizarre moons. Launched Oct. 15, 1997 from Cape Canaveral, Fla., the NASA spacecraft has traveled more than 2 billion miles during a roundabout, 6.7-year journey to the ringed planet. The most ambitious planetary mission ever, the $3 billion international project is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

* The Cassini spacecraft took a roundabout route to Saturn. It made two "slingshot" swings past Venus and one each past Earth and Jupiter to achieve the additional speed necessary to reach the Saturn system. * The Cassini spacecraft is carrying a digital disk containing more than 600,000 signatures penned by people from 81 countries, as well as baby footprints and even cat and dog paw prints. The disk is riding on the spacecraft's exterior.

The University of Colorado at Boulder will host a free space celebration that will include a live NASA television feed of the $3 billion Cassini-Huygens mission that is expected to enter Saturn's orbit June 30 toting a $12 million CU-Boulder instrument. The event will begin at the Space Technology Building of CU's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at 6:30 p.m. and include live NASA video and audio coverage on the insertion of the spacecraft into the ringed planet's orbit.

Editors' Note: The launch date of the AURA satellite has changed several times in recent weeks. The July 10 date listed in this release is subject to change. We will issue a media advisory when the launch date is confirmed. Just after 3 a.m. on July 10, University of Colorado at Boulder researcher John Gille expects to watch a new NASA satellite blast into orbit from the dark California coastline on a mission to study Earth's protective ozone layer, climate and air quality changes with unprecedented detail.

More than 100 plant and animal experts will be surveying 6,000 acres of publicly owned and managed grasslands in Jefferson and Boulder counties June 25 and June 26 in a 24-hour scramble to identify as many species as possible.

While many of their peers attend athletic camps this summer to prepare for fall sports, students enrolled in two Front Range public schools will attend academic skills camps to prepare themselves for the study of engineering. More than 60 ninth-graders entering the Centaurus Pre-Engineering Academy and the new Denver School of Science and Technology this fall will get an introduction to the creativity and challenges in engineering through weeklong workshops presented by the Integrated Teaching and Learning Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

William Wood, a distinguished professor of biology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has won an international research award in recognition of a lifetime of scientific achievements, including groundbreaking work that could produce a better understanding of how genetic defects can lead to the birth of malformed children.

The University of Colorado at Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics has been selected by NASA to build two of the three instruments for a satellite that will launch in 2006 to study noctilucent clouds, the shiny, silvery-blue polar mesospheric clouds that form about 50 miles over Earth's polar regions each summer.

A panel discussion on media coverage of investigations and allegations surrounding football recruiting practices at the University of Colorado at Boulder will be held June 22 from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. in Hale Science Building room 270. The event is sponsored by the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and is free and open to the public.