MISSION CONTROL CENTER
STS-69 Status Report #5

Saturday,  Sept. 9, 1995, 3 P.M.  CDT

With the Spartan spacecraft flying ahead of Endeavour, the stage is
set for Sunday morning's planned rendezvous and retrieval of the
free-flying science satellite.

This afternoon, Commander Dave Walker and Pilot Ken Cockrell fired
Endeavour's reaction control system jets in a two-second burn designed
to maintain a distance of at least 40 nautical miles between the two
orbiting spacecraft until the rendezvous activities begin early Sunday
morning. Those rendezvous activities will start with Walker and
Cockrell conducting a series of complex maneuvers designed to bring
Endeavour to a point about 350 feet away from Spartan by 8:59
a.m. Central on Sunday.  After Walker edges Endeavour closer to
Spartan, Mission Specialist Mike Gernhardt will reach out with the
Shuttle's robot arm and grapple Spartan at 9:24 a.m. Central, placing
it back in Endeavour's payload bay.

Work with the GLO experiment mounted in the payload bay will continue
overnight as the five astronauts on board sleep. The GLO instruments
will measure the luminescence created around the Shuttle as it plows
through atomic oxygen in low Earth orbit at a speed of five miles a
second.

The EPICS experiment in the Shuttle's middeck, designed to test the
capability to separate hydrogen and oxygen components in water
generated by the Shuttle, has been powered down after all three
self-contained electrolysis units experienced an automatic shutdown.
After reviewing their options for restoring power to at least two of
those units, payload controllers opted to completely power off the
experiment. Troubleshooting efforts continue to resolve a problem with
the UV-STAR experiment which comprises a part of the International
Extreme Ultraviolet Hitchiker payload.  Pressure problems and
difficulty commanding an elevation gimble which enables the telescope
to swivel back and forth have kept the telescope from its study of the
sun's coronal plasma.  A second telescope is performing normally.

Following a busy day on orbit, the astronauts will begin an eight-hour
sleep period at 4:09 p.m. Central, receiving a wake-up call from
Mission Control at 12:09 a.m. Central Sunday to begin Flight Day 4 on
orbit.

Endeavour is orbiting the Earth every 92 minutes at an altitude of 232
statute miles with all of its systems operating well.