MISSION CONTROL CENTER
STS-67 Status Report #28

Thursday, March 16, 1995, 8 a..m. CST

With one space mission nearing completion, another is just beginning
as Endeavour prepares to come home and the Mir Space Station welcomes
a fresh crew.

A day and a half remains in the STS-67 mission with final celestial
observations underway and the Space Shuttle being readied for a return
home to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday afternoon.
Three landing opportunities are available: 1:53, 3:30 and 5:07 p.m.
The deorbit burn for each landing attempt would occur about one hour
prior to landing.  Flight controllers will assess the weather forecast
for Friday throughout the day in preparation for the entry team's
arrival in Mission Control early tomorrow morning.

Astronomical observations using the ASTRO-2 payload will continue
throughout Friday morning aboard Endeavour prior to the transition
from payload operations to the landing timeline, four hours before the
deorbit ignition of the Shuttle's orbital maneuvering system engines.

At 1:45 Central time this morning, a small Soyuz spacecraft docked
with the Russian Mir Space Station and two three-person crews became
one as the Mir crew welcomed their replacements. An hour and a half
later at about 3:30 a.m. central time Cosmonaut- researcher Norman
Thagard and his two Mir-18 crewmates -- Commander Vladimir Dezhurov
and Flight Engineer Gennadiy Strekalov -- were welcomed aboard Mir
with the traditional Russian gift of salt and bread. For the next
several days, the Mir 18 crew will be briefed on the space station
systems by the Mir 17 crew -- Alexander Viktorenko, Elena Kondakova
and Valery Polyakov. The Mir 17 crew will return to Earth on March 22,
as Thagard, Dezhurov and Strekalov begin a three month stay on board
Mir, returning to Earth aboard Atlantis at the conclusion of the next
Shuttle mission in June.

A planned Shuttle-to-Mir conversation between STS-67 Commander Steve
Oswald and Thagard is planned for 11 a.m. central time today.  The two
flew as crewmates on a Shuttle flight in 1992.

The JSC Newsroom is open from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays, and from 9
a.m.-1 p.m. weekends throughout the mission. NASA's MSFC Newsroom is
open from 6 a.m.-6 p.m. weekdays, and from 6 a.m.-2
p.m. weekends. MSFC's Code-A-Phone is updated twice daily and can be
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