MISSION CONTROL CENTER STATUS REPORT # 7
			STS-69

Sunday, September 10, 1995, 3:30 P.M. CDT

   With the Spartan spacecraft back in Endeavour's payload bay, the
shuttle's robot arm has a firm grip on the Wake Shield Facility,
ready to send it on its free flight away from Endeavour early Monday
morning.

  Earlier this afternoon, Commander Dave Walker and Pilot Ken Cockrell
twice fired Endeavour's orbital maneuvering system engines bringing
Endeavour to a 215 nautical mile circular orbit required to support
Wake Shield deploy activities.  With that complete, Mission Specialist
Jim Newman took control of Endeavour's robot arm and grappled the
12 foot diameter satellite.  Wake Shield will remain in that
configuration overnight, latched in its cross-bay carrier and attached
to the robot arm.

  The crew's attention turned to Wake Shield operations following the
successful retrieval of the Spartan spacecraft at 10:02 a.m. Central
today.  Retrieval of Spartan occurred 38 minutes late when it was
found to be in an attitude, or position, other than what was expected
when Endeavour made its rendezvous approach. Walker and Cockrell
manually flew Endeavour in a 180 degree maneuver around Spartan,
aligning the shuttle's robot arm with the grapple fixture mounted
on the spacecraft. Mike Gernhardt then reached out with the arm and
grabbed Spartan, tucking it into Endeavour's payload bay at 10:21
a.m.  Central.

  Preliminary indications are that Spartan put itself in a "safe"
mode, shutting down its power systems which kept it from achieving its
anticipated rendezvous attitude. The exact cause of the safing will be
determined once Spartan is returned to Earth, however, payload
controllers believe Spartan successfully completed its mission
gathering data on the sun's corona and solar winds and the shutdown
likely was caused by low battery readings on board.

  Shortly after 3 p.m., Gernhardt began an 8-hour sleep period, to be
followed an hour later by his crewmates, who will have an abbreviated
7-hour sleep period. For the next few days, Gernhardt and Newman will
vary their sleep schedules so that one or both of them is awake during
all critical commanding to the Wake Shield Facility.

  The five astronauts will wake up at 11:09 p.m. Central today to
begin Flight Day 5 on orbit. Endeavour continues to perform flawlessly
as it circles the Earth every 92 minutes.