MISSION CONTROL CENTER
STS-79 Status Report #1
6 a.m. CDT

Monday, Sept. 16, 1996

  The Space Shuttle Atlantis launched on time at 3:54 a.m. CDT today,
beginning a planned 10 day mission in which Atlantis will dock with
the Russian Space Station Mir and retrieve U.S. astronaut Shannon
Lucid, ending her record-setting six month stay onboard Mir.

  Atlantis' six member crew includes veteran astronaut John Blaha, who
will replace Lucid on Mir and become the third of seven Americans who
will live and work as a researcher aboard Mir through 1998. Blaha will
spend about four months on board the space station.

  During a communications hook-up with Houston's Mission Control,
Lucid told ground controllers that she saw the launch from on board
Mir. At the time of the shuttle's launch, Mir was about 5,000 nautical
miles southwest of Florida's Kennedy Space Center.

  Following a normal ascent into space, Atlantis' auxiliary power unit
#2 experienced a premature shutdown about the time of main engine
cutoff.  Because of that situation, flight controllers considered an
option in which the shuttle would have docked with Mir a day
earlier. However, after further evaluation, the flight control team
notified the crew that they should press on toward the planned docking
time on Wednesday but that ground controllers would continue their
evaluation of the APU's health in regard to the duration of the docked
operations and the duration of the flight.

  Currently the planned docking would occur at 10:17 p.m. CDT on
Wednesday with undocking set for 8:31 p.m. Sept. 23. During docked
operations, Blaha would join the Mir crew, Lucid would join the
Atlantis crew, and astronauts will deliver food, water, clothing and
other supplies to Mir. Atlantis' crew also will bring back materials
gathered from science experiments that have been conducted on board
the Russian space station.

  The orbiter's payload bay doors were opened about 5:15 a.m. and
ground controllers gave the crew a go-ahead for on-orbit operations.

  Atlantis crew members, commanded by Bill Readdy, will begin their
sleep period at 8:54 a.m. today and will be awakened at 4:54
p.m. today.