STS-77 Mission Control Center 
Status Report 5

Tuesday, May 21, 7 a.m. CDT

Endeavour's astronauts are focusing their attention today on
retrieving the Spartan satellite and returning it to the Shuttle's
payload bay.

After being awakened at 12:30 a.m. CDT Commander John Casper, Pilot
Curt Brown and Mission Specialist Dan Bursch prepared for the
rendezvous while Mission Specialists Andy Thomas, Mario Runco and Marc
Garneau continued work on the orbiter's middeck and in the Spacehab
module.

The retrieval operations began shortly after the crew was awakened by
the Fifth Dimension's "Up, Up and Away" in honor of the Inflatable
Antenna Experiment conducted yesterday as part of the Spartan mission.
The IAE was jettisoned later in the morning and is expected to enter
the Earth's atmosphere about 3 p.m. today.

This morning's rendezvous is the first of four planned during the
mission.  Following a series of jet firings, Endeavour will approach
Spartan to within a distance of about 30 feet, where Garneau will
extend the ship's robot arm to grapple the satellite for its berthing
back on its payload bay platform. After the retrieval of Spartan,
three more rendezvous are scheduled after tomorrow's deployment of a
technology demonstration satellite designed to test an aerodynamically
stabilized method of attitude control.

Endeavour is currently in a 176-mile high circular orbit, completing
one revolution of Earth every 90 minutes. The crew will go to sleep at
3:30 this afternoon and wake up at 11:30 tonight.

The JSC Newsroom will remain open around the clock during the flight
of Endeavour.