STS-79 Mission Control Center
Status Report #10


Friday, September 20, 1996 6 p.m.

Astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the combined shuttle/Mir spacecraft
will awaken at 8:54 p.m. CDT to begin their second full day of docked
operations that will include more cargo transfers and work with the
Active Rack Isolation System.

The day's work again will begin with a planning session led by
Atlantis Commander Bill Readdy and Mir 22 Commander Valery Korzun and
involving all nine crew members. The crews are more than half finished
transferring supplies, hardware and experiment samples between the
spacecraft, but will continue those transfers throughout the day.

After that is complete, Mission Specialist Carl Walz again will work
with the Mechanics of Granular Materials experiment in the double
Spacehab module while Mission Specialist Shannon Lucid gets a workout
on the Mir treadmill, continuing physical conditioning exercises
designed to prepare her body for the return to Earth's gravity after
six months in orbit. About the same time, Mir Flight Engineer 2 John
Blaha will begin biomedical tests that are part of his four-month
protocol aboard Mir

Shortly after midnight, Mission Specialist Jay Apt will monitor the
ARIS experiment as Readdy and Korzun fire maneuvering jets on their
spacecraft to test the ability of the International Space Station
prototype experiment rack to dampen the resulting vibrations.

Several hours later, Apt will conduct a photographic survey of Mir
from the shuttle's flight deck windows while Mission Specialist Tom
Akers shoots IMAX movie scenes of Readdy, Pilot Terry Wilcutt and
Korzun in the Spektr module. Later in the day, Akers and Korzun will
move the IMAX camera to the Priroda module.

At 5:29 a.m., Readdy, Wilcutt, Akers, Lucid, Blaha, Korzun and Kaleri
will be interviewed by Russian journalists in the Mir core module. The
interview will not be broadcast on NASA Television.

The joined spacecraft continue to travel around the world once every
90 minutes at an altitude of about 235 miles, with all of their
systems working well. Undocking remains scheduled for 8:31 p.m. CDT
Monday. The next STS-79 status report will be issued at 6 a.m. CDT
Saturday.

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