STS-79 Mission Control Center
Status Report  #2

Monday, September 16, 1996  5 p.m. CDT

Astronauts on board the Space Shuttle Atlantis began their first full
day of orbit operations at 4:54 p.m. CDT today, awakening to the song
"Duke of Earl." The song, performed by Gene Chandler, was uplinked in
honor of Mission Specialist Carl Walz's 20th anniversary.  The song is
one he performed for his wife, Pam, before they were married while he
was a member of an Ohio band called "The Blue Moons." This is the
second time Walz has spent his anniversary on orbit.

One of the crew's first activities today will be an Orbiter
Maneuvering System engine burn to fine-tune the shuttle's approach to
the Mir Space Station. That burn is scheduled for about 10:45
p.m. CDT. Atlantis is in a 159 by 131 nautical mile orbit about 16,000
nautical miles away from Mir and closing at a rate of 575 miles each
orbit.

Docking with Mir is planned for 10:17 p.m. CDT Wednesday. During
docked operations, Blaha will join the Mir crew and Lucid will join
the Atlantis crew. Before undocking at 8:31 p.m. Sept. 23, the
astronauts will deliver food, water, clothing and other supplies to
Mir, and pick up science experiment samples from Mir.

Also on tap for the crew are the setup and activation of the double
Spacehab module in Atlantis' payload bay and several other
experiments. Included among those is the Active Rack Isolation System
designed to dampen vibrations on International Space Station
experiments. Apt and Walz will begin setting up ARIS about 9:30
p.m. CDT. The crew also will start readying packages for their
transfer to Mir.

Flight controllers and mission managers continue to review data on the
unexpected shutdown of auxiliary power unit #2. Shuttle managers
decided to go forward with a Wednesday docking, but are still looking
at the APU's health in regard to the duration of the docked operations
and the mission. Atlantis has two healthy APUs.

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