MCC Status Report #6
Mission Control Center
STS-64 Status Report #6
 
Monday, Sept. 12, 7 a.m. CDT
 
Payload activities continue to go well on board Discovery as the STS-64
crew begins its fourth day in space.
 
Investigators are describing some of the data takes with the Lidar
In-Space Technology Experiment, or LITE, as "rich" when compared to
measurements taken by ground and aircraft instruments. LITE is the first
use of a "lidar" system in space.
 
Lidar, an acronym for light detection and ranging is similar to the radar
commonly used to track everything from airplanes in flight to
thunderstorms. It can be thought of as an optical radar, but instead of
bouncing radio waves off its target, lidar uses short pulses of laser
light.  Some of that light reflects tiny particles in the atmosphere,
called aerosols, then back to a telescope aligned with the laser. By
precisely timing the lidar echo and by measuring how much laser light is
received by the telescope, scientists can accurately determine the
location, distribution and nature of the particle. The result is a
revolutionary new tool for studying the composition of Earth's atmosphere.
LITE data gathering activities will continue today.
 
Information from the Shuttle Plume Impingement Flight Experiment, or   
SPIFEX, indicates that all instruments on the 32-foot long extension of
the Discovery's robot arm are in good health and providing high quality
data.
 
Today, Discovery's crew will wrap up the mission. At the end of today's 
activities, SPIFEX will be berthed on the starboard side of the payload
bay so that the arm will be available for the deploy and retrieval of the
Spartan satellite on Tuesday. SPIFEX is being used in tests to help      
engineers characterize exhaust plumes emitted by the shuttle's steering
jets.
 
Overnight, the Robot Operated Materials Processing System, or ROMPS, 
continued its smooth operations. The first U.S. robotics system to be used
in space, ROMPS transports semiconductor samples from storage racks to  
halogen lamp furnaces for heating and cooling.
 
The STS-64 crew began its fourth day in space at 6:23 a.m. CDT with the   
song "Ace in the Hole" by George Strait.           
 
Discovery continues to perform without any major system anomalies as it
circles the Earth once every 90 minutes at an altitude of 142 by 141   
nautical miles.