STS-79 Mission Control Center
Status Report #5

Wednesday, September 18, 1996 6 a.m. CDT

Atlantis' six astronauts wrapped up another busy day on orbit activating
experiments in the Spacehab module while attending to final preparations
for tonight's docking to the Mir Space Station. The crew will move into
its rendezvous timeline early this evening as the Shuttle nears the
Russian outpost.

The crew is scheduled to go to sleep about 9 a.m. Central time and
will wake up about 4 p.m. for the final hours of rendezvous and
docking, which should occur about 10:13 tonight. The hatches between
the joined spacecraft are scheduled to be opened shortly after 12:30
AM Thursday morning. After initial safety briefings, U.S. astronauts
Shannon Lucid and John Blaha will officially trade places as Mir crew
members when their custom-fitted Soyuz capsule seat liners are
swapped. That activity will officially mark the point when Blaha will
become a Mir-22 flight engineer and Lucid will join the STS-79 crew as
a mission specialist, ending her six-month stay on the space station.

Blaha will join Mir 22 Commander Valery Korzun and his flight engineer,
Alexander Kaleri, aboard Mir for the next four months. Blaha will be
replaced by astronaut Jerry Linenger on Atlantis' next visit scheduled
for early January 1997 on mission STS-81.

While STS-79 Commander Bill Readdy and Pilot Terry Wilcutt conducted two
rendezvous burns today, other crew members worked in the Spacehab module
on science experiments.

The Active Rack Isolation System, or ARIS, was tended to by Mission
Specialist Carl Walz, who performed a minor maintenance procedure on one
of ARIS' vibration-damping pushrods while Tom Akers worked with an
inventory management system using a bar code reader to more effectively
keep track of items that will be transferred back and forth between the
Shuttle and the Mir. Jay Apt continued work with a furnace which heats
to nearly 1,600 degrees centigrade to melt metal samples for study after
the flight.

Apt also provided a television tour of the Spacehab, which is twice its
normal size for this flight to allow extra room for science experiments
and logistical items slated for transfer to Mir.

Atlantis' current orbit is 184 by 158 statute miles, as it closes its
distance from the Mir by more than 500 miles with each revolution of the
Earth.

The next status report on the STS-79 mission will be issued at 5 p.m.
Central time.

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