MISSION CONTROL CENTER
STS-70 Status Report #9

Monday, July 17, 1995, 4 p.m. CDT

  Discovery's crew passed the halfway point of their mission today,
continuing to encounter minimal problems as they worked on a variety
of experiments.

  The crew again today worked with the HERCULES video camera and the
WINDEX observations of Shuttle glow.  With HERCULES, the crew
continued to have difficulty performing star alignments but have
obtained very good Earth views, gathering 95 percent of the data
planned for the investigation thus far, according to the experiment's
sponsors.  For WINDEX, Commander Tom Henricks fired Discovery's
thrusters to allow the instrument to record the effects of such
firings on the glow seen around Shuttle surfaces.

  The only problem reported by the crew today was a faulty vacuum
cleaner cord that caused a circuit breaker to trip aboard the
spacecraft.  While performing some routine cleaning onboard, the
breaker tripped and the crew found several cuts in the cleaner's
electric cord.  The crew plans to splice the cord together, removing
the nicked portions, and test it out after checking with flight
controllers tomorrow.

  The crew's day is shifting earlier to help prepare for the early
morning landing opportunities at the end of the mission.  The
eight-hour sleep period for Discovery began at 3:12 p.m. CDT today,
and the crew will awaken for Day 6 of STS-70 at 11:12 p.m. tonight.

					-end-