MISSION CONTROL CENTER
STS-71 Status Report #7

Friday, June 30, 1995, 6 p.m. CDT

  Having dropped off two crew members and picked up three new crew
members yesterday, today was a day for loading and unloading gear
aboard Atlantis and the Mir Space Station.

  Medical samples and other materials associated with the Mir-18 crew
members -- U.S.  Astronaut Norm Thagard and Cosmonauts Vladimir
Dezhurov and Gennady Strekalov - - were loaded into Atlantis for the
trip home. Equipment for the Mir 19 and future missions was
transferred from the shuttle to the station. Thagard and crew were
officially relieved Thursday from their responsibilities for the
station by Mir 19's Anatoly Solovyev and Nikolai Budarin. Along with
the Mir 19 equipment, Atlantis' crew also filled four Russian space
agency tanks with excess water from the shuttle and transported it to
Mir. More such water transfers are planned during upcoming days of the
flight.

  The crew completed all their work on schedule today with no
problems. Flight controllers did ask Commander Hoot Gibson to reset
one of Atlantis' flight control computers, general purpose computer
number 4, which had experienced a problem early this morning, to
evaluate the computer problem. Gibson successfully reloaded computer,
and it was run for about an hour in an idle mode to evaluate its
performance.  Later, flight control software was loaded into the
computer while it was not attached functionally to the shuttle and it
was put in a standby mode for the night. Further evaluations of its
performance are planned tomorrow.

  In any event, Atlantis' four other identical flight control computers
are operating well and can perform all needed functions for the
spacecraft. In addition, a spare computer is onboard that could be
used to replace the GPC-4 machine if that is deemed necessary. The
crew began an eight-hour sleep period at 5:32 p.m. and will awaken at
1:32 a.m. central to begin their fifth day in orbit. Atlantis has been
docked with the Mir station for more than 34 hours and the spacecraft
are in an orbit with a high point of 219 nautical miles and low point
of 208 nautical miles, circling Earth every 92 minutes, 34 seconds.


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