STS-77 Status Report # 21
Mission Control Center

Wednesday, May 29, 1996; 6:30 AM CDT

The Shuttle Endeavour glided home this morning to a smooth landing at
the Kennedy Space Center to wrap up a 10-day, 4.1 million mile mission
devoted to technology research.

Commander John Casper and Pilot Curt Brown guided Endeavour to a
touchdown on Runway 33 at 6:09 AM Central time, wrapping up the fourth
Shuttle mission of the year in which the astronauts completed four
rendezvous' with a Spartan satellite and an aerodynamically
stabilized satellite called PAMS-STU, designed to test new ways to
keep a satellite in the correct orientation without the use of
propellents.

Casper and Brown fired Endeavour's braking rockets at 5:09 AM
Central time to enable the Shuttle to drop out of orbit for its
hour-long slide back to Earth. Endeavour streaked across the Pacific,
the San Francisco Bay Area, the Rocky Mountains and the Gulf Coast
before crossing over into Florida to align itself with KSC's
Shuttle Landing Facility.

This is Endeavour's last flight until December 1997, when it will
be launched again on the STS-88 mission, the first launch of
U.S. hardware for the assembly of the International Space
Station. Endeavour will be ferried to Palmdale, California in August
for eight months of major modifications in preparation for Station
assembly missions.

Endeavour's astronauts will return to Ellington Field at about 4:30
this afternoon following medical exams in Florida and reunions with
their families.

-end-