STS-76 Mission Control Center 
Status Report # 8

Tuesday, March 26, 1996, 6 a.m. CST

Atlantis' astronauts viewed Comet Hyakutake early this morning as it
continued its close pass by Earth, and they told reporters the comet
was brilliant and could be seen almost from horizon to horizon.

The comments came during an in-flight press conference with the
Atlantis/Mir crews taking questions from reporters at NASA centers and
in Russia.  Although reporting that their glimpse of the comet was
spectacular, the crew has not yet been able to capture it on
televison. The astronauts and cosmonauts also took time out from their
transfer and resupply activities to talk with Charlie Gibson of
'Good Morning America' shortly after 4 a.m. central time today.

For much of the first half of their day, the crew members continued to
transfer water, supplies and science equipment between the two
spacecraft.  More than 1,000 pounds of water, in 10 water containers,
has been moved to the Mir space station to provide drinking and
bathing water for the Mir 21 crew.

The last half of the Atlantis crew's day was devoted to preparing for
Wednesday morning's six-hour spacewalk by Linda Godwin and Rich
Clifford. The hatches between Atlantis and Mir were closed, as was the
hatch between Atlantis and the SpaceHab module. The astronauts then
depressurized the Shuttle's cabin from its standard 14.7 pounds per
square inch to 10.2 psi, a standard pre-spacewalk protocol.  At the
same time, Godwin and Clifford breathed pure oxygen to begin the
process of purging nitrogen from their bodies for the spacewalk. The
SpaceHab and Shuttle-Mir hatches will remain closed until the
spacewalk is completed.

The two spacewalkers currently are scheduled to float out of
Atlantis' airlock just after midnight, marking the start of the
first extravehicular activity to be conducted around the Mir by
American astronauts.  During the spacewalk, four experiment containers
designed to characterize the environment around Mir will be attached
to handrails on the space station.  The packages will be retrieved in
a subsequent spacewalk in about 18 months and will provide information
on the quantity and type of orbital debris and contaminants found in
the same general altitude and orbital inclination planned for the
International Space Station.

The Atlantis-Mir complex continues to orbit the Earth every 90 minutes
at an altitude of about 240 statute miles with systems on both
spacecraft operating normally.