STS-79 Mission Control Center
Status Report  #11

Saturday, September 21, 1996, 6 a.m. CDT

Activities aboard Atlantis/Mir continue smoothly as the nine
astronauts and cosmonauts work in their second full day of docked
operations.

Flight Day 6 began shortly after 9 p.m. central time Friday when
Atlantis' crew was awakened by Mission Control.  The continuing
transfer of logistical supplies and scientific hardware is proceeding
smoothly, with more than 85% of the total transfer items already moved
from Atlantis to the Mir.

Early this morning, Mission Specialists Jay Apt and Carl Walz once
again worked with the Active Rack Isolation System experiment to
replace a broken pushrod.  With that complete, Apt monitored the ARIS
experiment as STS-79 Commander Bill Readdy and Mir 22 Commander Valery
Korzun fired small maneuvering jets on their spacecraft to test the
ability of ARIS to damp out any disturbances created by the firings.
Walz also is continuing his work with the Mechanics of Granular
Materials experiment in Atlantis' double Spacehab module.

This morning, the astronauts used the large format IMAX camera to
conduct a photographic survey of Mir from the Shuttle's flight deck
windows while Mission Specialist Tom Akers shot 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
participated in a Russian media interview from the Mir core module
with reporters in the Russian Mission Control Center.  The interview
was not broadcast on NASA Television.

The two spacecraft continue to circle the Earth 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 5 p.m. CDT Saturday.

###


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