STS-89 MISSION ARCHIVE (complete)
Updated: 02/01/98

Shuttle-Mir Docking Mission No. 8

By William Harwood
CBS News/Kennedy Space Center

The following copy originally was posted on the CBS News "Up To The
Minute" Current Mission space page
(http://uttm.com/space/missions/current.html).

Comments and corrections welcome!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

   -Shuttle Endeavour glides to smooth landing (01/31-01/98)
   -Shuttle crew gears up for landing (01/30/98)
   -Shuttle Endeavour undocks; Mir-25 crew launched (01/29/98)
   -Hatches closed between Mir and shuttle Endeavour (01/28/98)
   -Shuttle crew wraps up logistics transfer (01/27/98)
   -Thomas suit issue resolved; shuttle electrical problem (01/26/98)
   -Thomas joins Mir crew; shuttle attitude control issue (01/25-26/98)
   -Shuttle Endeavour docks with Mir space station (01/24/98)
   -Astronauts work minor glitches, close in on Mir (01/23/98)
   -Shuttle Endeavour rockets into orbit (01/22/98)
   -Culbertson outlines launch options (01/21/98)
   -Weather outlook unchanged for Endeavour launch (01/21/98)
   -Weather threatens shuttle launch (01/20/98)
   -Shuttle mission preview (01/20/98)
   -Crew arrives for start of countdown (01/19/98)
   -Hydraulic leaks monitored (01/17/98)
   -Shuttle crew practices emergency procedures (01/10/98)
   -New launch time (01/05/98)
   -Engineers mull additional two-day launch delay (12/17/97)
   -Initial flight information (12/15/97)

===================================================================

Shuttle Endeavour glides to smooth landing (01/31-01/98)

   9:30 a.m., 02/01/98, Update: Wolf walks off shuttle; appears in good
health

   Astronaut David Wolf, looking fit and at ease after 127.8 days in
space, walked off the shuttle Endeavour Saturday but put off eating a
hot pizza to help researchers chart his body's initial re-adaptation to
gravity. Speaking to a NASA public affairs officer early this morning,
Wolf said he felt good but that quick movements tended to make him
dizzy.
   "I feel fine. But you'll notice I'm keeping my head pretty still
because if I turn my head very much my body feels like it's accelerating
into the next room and the room will turn upside down," Wolf said. "So
I'm being very careful. I feel about as I expected. It's hard to live in
space and it's hard to come back. And that's what a lot of our research
is all about.
   "I walked off the orbiter," he added. "We talked about it and it's
just more practical to get through the hatch and out. And we thought it
was important to know if you're able to walk off. That's important for
egress and any kind of emergency situation. And then I quickly got
horizontal so as not to corrupt the scientific data. I think our
scientists were all agreeable to doing it that way."
   Before landing, Wolf joked about attending a post-landing beach party
at a local motel. But he said this morning that discretion was the
better part of valor and he decided to stay at crew quarters where
researchers continued to monitor his re-adaptation to gravity.
   "I would like to go down there but I think it's probably best to
stick around here in the crew quarters,' he said. "We're still taking
medical data and of course, the priority of this whole mission is the
scientific understanding of the effects of space flight. So I hope to go
to the beach tomorrow (Sunday)."
   Wolf said he planned to take a couple of days off and then to begin a
lengthy debriefing to help NASA managers and engineers learn more about
long-duration space flight and the design of the international space
station. For his part, Wolf said he would "definitely" go back to Mir if
given an opportunity, but "not next month."
   As for his on-board experiments, "I think we got all of them done,"
Wolf said. "Some of them didn't go as well as we'd like and that's
another important reason for doing these missions. When we get to
international space station, we'll be in a lot better shape with what
we've learned in Phase One, the shuttle-Mir program.
   "I didn't realize up front just how important the shuttle-Mir program
would be to getting into the international space station program more
effectively and efficiently," he said. "The Russian spacecraft, although
it's not perfect, it is good enough to go up and do excellent
technological studies to make our instrumentation work, preliminary
research studies for long-duration research such as tissue cultures and
protein crystal growth and I know we're leaps and bounds ahead of where
we would be had we just now been starting the international space
station. In fact, it would be hard to imagine just, cold, starting the
partnership with the Russians with the international space station
having not done the shuttle-Mir program."

   9:45 p.m., 01/31/98, Update: NASA manager says additional Mir flights
unlikely

   With the shuttle Endeavour's successful landing today, only one more
shuttle visit to the Mir space station remains on the books. Despite
Russian suggestions for an additional flight, a top NASA manager said
that does not appear likely. Frank Culbertson, NASA manager of
shuttle-Mir operations, said no discussions are underway about an
additional flight and the only such mission that likely would even be
considered would be one to eventually assist the Russians in safely
deorbiting the space station.
   "There's been no further discussion and we've had no proposals from
the Russians," Culbertson said. "There really is no place in the
[shuttle launch] schedule right now to put an additional flight to the
Mir for logistics support."
   He said the only way NASA would consider such a flight "would be if
it was associated with the deorbit of the Mir itself and ending the
mission. With that type of an approach, we might be able to have some
discussions and come up with some kind of a joint plan. But that's
really the only thing I think would be considered by anybody."
   As for Endeavour's just completed mission, Culbertson and shuttle
program manager Tommy Holloway both called the flight a success, saying
the shuttle-Mir docking program had achieved its goal of paving the way
toward assembly of the international space station.
   "It seems a very short time ago that we went to Moscow and talked
about the possibility of doing a docking mission on the station,"
Holloway said. "And now we're on the last leg of completing a program
that I think will go a great deal toward preparing us to do the
international space station."
   Endeavour's crew brought David Wolf back to Earth after 128 days in
space. He was replaced aboard Mir by astronaut Andrew Thomas, who will
remain in orbit until early June.
   "Through the miracle of modern technology, I was able to communicate
with Dave Wolf just a little while ago and Dave sounded great,"
Culbertson said about an hour and a half after landing. "He's very happy
to be home, he wanted me to tell everyone this was the greatest
adventure of his life, he's very glad he did it and he also said he
couldn't imagine attempting ISS without this Phase One experience."
   On a different topic, Holloway told reporters he is not overly
concerned about recent job cuts at the Kennedy Space Center by prime
contractor United Space Alliance. In fact, he implied that even more
reductions will be required in the years ahead to keep the shuttle
program affordable.
   "Even though the costs have come down over the years, the cost of
operating the shuttle still is extremely high," he said. "For example,
we flew seven flights a year and with today's budget plus institutional
costs, each one of these flights costs us over $500 million. So for the
long range vitality and health and perhaps survival of the shuttle
program it's necessary to reduce costs. ... I'm quite satisfied the
shuttle team will be able to respond to these reductions and deal with
them."

   5:45 p.m. Update: Shuttle Endeavour glides to smooth landing

   The shuttle Endeavour glided to a smooth sunset touchdown at the
Kennedy Space Center this evening to close out NASA's eighth Mir docking
mission, bringing astronaut David Wolf back to Earth after four months
in space and leaving Andrew Thomas behind in his place.
   With commander Terry Wilcutt and pilot Joe Edwards at the controls,
Endeavour swooped to a picture-perfect touchdown on runway 15 at 5:35:09
p.m., wrapping up a nine-day voyage spanning 138 complete orbits and 4.6
million miles since blastoff Jan. 22 from nearby pad 39A. Mission
duration was eight days 19 hours 46 minutes and 54 seconds.
   "Wheels stopped, Houston," Wilcutt radioed as the shuttle rolled to a
stop.
   "Roger wheels stopped, Endeavour. Welcome home. Congratulations on a
perfect mission to Mir. And Dave, welcome back from 128 days on orbit,"
replied astronaut Susan Still from mission control in Houston.
   "I wasn't counting, but is that what it was?" Wolf called. "It'll be
a pleasure to see you, Susan, thanks to everybody. This feels great!"
   About 20 minutes after touchdown, ground crews began cranking open
Endeavour's hatch.
   "There's a knock at the door and the hatch handle's turning," a crew
member said on the shuttle's audio circuit.
   "I'm pretty excited about this," Wolf replied. Then, a few minutes
later: "And the hatch is open! Oh the smell, and the air from the
Earth!"
   As with all returning Mir astronauts, Wolf made the trip back to
Earth resting on his back in a special recumbent seat mounted on
Endeavour's lower deck. While he joked Friday about attending a beach
party after landing, he was not expected to get through with medical
tests, dinner and a thorough physical exam until late in the evening.
Wolf originally said he planned to walk off the shuttle, but he said
Friday he had changed his mind and had agreed to be carried off to help
researchers collect as much data as possible about his body's initial
re-adaptation to gravity.
   Endeavour's touchdown capped a busy day in space, coming just
four-and-a-half hours after Mir-25 commander Talgat Musabayev, flight
engineer Nikolai Budarin and French researcher Leopold Eyharts docked
with the Mir space station. The trio blasted off Thursday aboard the
Soyuz Tm-27 vehicle  at 11:33 a.m. from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, just 24
minutes before Endeavour undocked from Mir. To make way for the Soyuz
TM-27 vehicle, a Progress resupply craft now loaded with trash was
undocked from the Kvant-1 port shortly before 8 a.m. Friday.
   About 90 minutes after docking today, Musabayev, Budarin and Eyharts
joined Mir-24 commander Anatoly Solovyev, flight engineer Pavel
Vinogradov and Thomas for a televised welcoming ceremony in the Mir core
module. Around Feb. 19, Solovyev, Vinogradov and Eyharts will return to
Earth, leaving Thomas behind with the Mir-25 crew. Thomas will return to
Earth in June aboard the shuttle Discovery.
   Back on Earth, meanwhile, Endeavour appeared none the worse for its
fiery re-entry. The return to Earth began at 4:28 p.m. with a
three-minute 27-second firing of the shuttle's twin orbital maneuvering
system rockets as the vehicle passed high above Indonesia. The burn
slowed Endeavour by 245 mph and put the shuttle on a trajectory carrying
it over Central America and Cuba before a high-speed northeasterly pass
across the heart of Florida. After guiding Endeavour through a sweeping
left overhead turn, Wilcutt lined up on the centerline of runway 15 and
swooped to a flawless touchdown.
   While Wolf faced a battery of post-flight medical checks, Wilcutt,
Edwards, Michael Anderson, James Reilly, Bonny Dunbar and Russian
cosmonaut Shalizhan Sharipov were expected to leave the orbiter about an
hour after touchdown for a brief walk-around inspection. All of the crew
members are scheduled to fly back to the Johnson Space Center on Sunday,
after a post-landing news conference.
   Endeavour's flight was the eighth of nine planned shuttle-Mir linkups
serving as a training ground before both nations begin assembly of the
international space station later this year. Thomas is the seventh and
final U.S. astronaut scheduled for a long-duration stay aboard Mir. Wolf
logged 127.8 days in space since blastoff aboard the shuttle Atlantis in
September. Thomas expects to put in 135.7 days aloft before returning to
Earth in June, giving U.S. astronauts a cumulative 972.1 days in space
aboard Mir.
   For those of you scoring at home, the Russian record for
long-duration space flight is 438 days. Astronaut Shannon Lucid holds
the U.S. record with 188.2 days. As of today's landing, U.S. astronauts
have logged 795.7 days in space, the last 680.4 of them in a row.
   As with all Mir docking missions, swapping out crew members was just
one of several major objectives. Endeavour carried nearly 6,000 pounds
of fresh water, supplies and repair equipment to the Russian station and
brought back nearly 3,000 pounds of material. Here is the pre-launch
breakdown:

   MATERIAL.............TO MIR........FROM MIR
   
   Water................1,400.........N/A
   U.S. Science.........930.6.........1,680.2
   Dara/CNES............N/A...........N/A
   Russian Logistics....3,247.2.......678.8
   Miscellaneous........257.4.........470.1
   
   TOTAL................4,435.2.......2,829.1

   While exact totals won't be known until after Endeavour is serviced,
project managers said the combined crews accomplished 100 percent of
their logistics transfer objectives. Frank Culbertson, NASA director of
shuttle-Mir operations, was expected to participate in a post-landing
news conference around 7 p.m. Quotes and details will be posted here as
warranted.


   4:35 p.m. Update: Shuttle fires braking rockets for return to Earth

   Flying upside down and backward over the southern Pacific Ocean,
commander Terry Wilcutt and pilot Joe Edwards fired the shuttle
Endeavour's twin orbital maneuvering system rockets at 4:28 p.m.,
slowing the ship by 245 miles an hour to drop out of orbit. The
three-minute 27-second rocket firing put the shuttle on course for a
touchdown at the Kennedy Space Center at 5:35 p.m. This status report
wil be updated after landing or as conditions warrant.


   2:30 p.m. Update: Shuttle's cargo bay doors closed for entry

   The Endeavour astronauts closed the shuttle's 60-foot-long cargo bay
doors today around 2 p.m., setting the stage for an on-time landing at
the Kennedy Space Center at 5:35 p.m. Forecasters continue to predict
good weather, although they are monitoring possible turbulence at the
40,000-foot level. Endeavour's systems are in good shape and the crew is
gearing up to don their entry suits for landing. This status report will
be updated after the deorbit burn, at 4:28 p.m., or as conditions
warrant.


   8:20 a.m. Update: Good weather expected for shuttle landing

   The Endeavour astronauts were awakened at 6:43 a.m. today by a
recording of "Breakfast Blues" by a Houston band called Trout Fishing in
America to begin preparations for re-entry and landing. Touchdown at the
Kennedy Space Center remains on schedule for 5:35:06 p.m. to close out a
138-orbit mission spanning 3.6 million miles since blastoff Jan. 22.
   The astronauts have two landing opportunities today:
 
   ORBIT...TIME............EVENT..............NOTES
   
   138.....04:27:45 p.m....Deorbit ignition...dV: 245 mph; dT: 3:27
   139.....05:35:06 p.m....Landing............Runway 15, Kennedy Space
Center
   
   139.....06:03:51 p.m....Deorbit ignition...dV: 357 fps; dT: 3:27
   140.....07:10:25 p.m....Landing............Runway 15, Kennedy Space
Center

   But forecasters continue to predict near perfect weather at the
Florida spaceport and with more of the same expected Sunday, NASA is not
staffing Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., as a backup landing site. If
Endeavour fails to make it home for some reason this afternoon, however,
Edwards probably would be staffed for Sunday's attempt.
   Here's the crew's timeline for landing today:

   TIME.........EVENT
   
   12:27 p.m....Crew transitions to deorbit timeline
   01:47 p.m....The shuttle's payload bay doors are closed
   02:09 p.m....Flight computers begin running OPS-3 entry software
   02:33 p.m....Crew reviews entry procedures
   03:02 p.m....The astronauts don their pressure suits
   04:06 p.m....Mission control "go" for burn
   04:28 p.m....Deorbit burn; 
   04:48 p.m....The shuttle falls into the discernible atmosphere
   05:35 p.m....Landing at the Kennedy Space Center

   Flying upside down and backward over the southern Pacific Ocean,
commander Terry Wilcutt and pilot Joe Edwards plan to fire Endeavour's
twin orbital maneuvering system rockets at 4:27:45 p.m. for three
minutes and 27 seconds, slowing the shuttle by 245 mph. The vehicle will
fall into the discernible atmosphere at 5:04 p.m., following a
northeasterly ground track that will carry the crew over Central America
and Cuba before crossing over the southwest coast of Florida.
   See the CBS News Reporter's Notebook for additional details,
including NASA's plans for helping astronaut David Wolf re-adapt to
gravity after 128 days in weightlessness. See the Breaking News page for
coverage of today's docking of the Soyuz TM-27 vehicle and the Mir space
station at 1:13 p.m.

===================================================================

Shuttle crew gears up for landing (01/30/98)

   6:00 p.m. Update: Good weather expected for shuttle landing

   The Endeavour astronauts tested their re-entry systems today and
packed up for a sunset landing Saturday at the Kennedy Space Center to
close out NASA's eighth shuttle-Mir docking mission. Leaving astronaut
Andrew Thomas behind aboard the Russian space station, Endeavour's crew
is scheduled to touch down at 5:35:13 p.m. at the Florida spaceport.
Astronaut David Wolf, the man Thomas replaced aboard Mir, will make the
trip back to Earth resting on his back to ease the impact of returning
to full gravity after four months in the weightlessness of space.
   Mission duration at touchdown will be eight days 19 hours 46 minutes
and 51 seconds. Endeavour will have completed 138 complete orbits and
traveled 3.6 million miles since blastoff Jan. 22 from pad 39A.
   While Wolf said Thursday he planned to walk off the shuttle, he told
an interviewer today he would instead be carried out of the orbiter to
help researchers collect as much data as possible about his
re-adaptation to gravity. But that doesn't mean he plans to stay off his
feet any longer than necessary.
   "We're having a beach party the night of landing out in front of the
Wakulla Motel and as soon as we can get processed through, we're going
to show up out there," Wolf joked.
   Chief flight surgeon Sam Poole at the Johnson Space Center in Houston
was a bit more cautious, saying all that would depend on how Wolf
actually feels once he's back down on the ground.
   "We're very cautious in those first few hours, in the first day or
two," Poole said. "People have a tendency to get sore muscles and are at
risk for maybe injuring a tendon or something like that because of the
re-introduction of working in the gravity field, particularly as they
walk about. In general, the rehabilitation plan follows a progressive
ambulation. That's getting them up and walking them around. Some are
able to do that better than others."
   As for Wolf's beach party, Poole said, "if he's in good physical
shape, I don't think we would put restrictions on him."
   Entry flight director John Shannon said Endeavour's systems are in
good shape and ideal weather is expected for landing. Endeavour will
have two opportunities to land in Florida, one at 5:35 p.m. and another
at 7:11 p.m. With good weather expected, NASA is not staffing the backup
landing site at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
   "This morning was spent by the crew preparing the vehicle for
tomorrow's re-entry," Shannon said. "As part of that, we did the
standard tests of the shuttle's attitude control thrusters, we powered
up the shuttle's hydraulic system and moved all the aerosurfaces. We
powered up the avionics systems required for entry and tested all of the
flight control systems and everything went very smoothly. We had no
problems at all."
   The deorbit burn will last for three minutes 27 seconds, slowing the
shuttle by 359 feet per second, or 245 mph. The vehicle will fall into
the discernible atmosphere 400,000 feet above the south Pacific Ocean at
5:04 p.m. Endeavour's northeasterly ground track will carry the shuttle
over Central America and Cuba before crossing over the west coast of
Florida.
   "We're only going to use Kennedy Space Center," Shannon said. "If we
have to wave off both opportunities at Kennedy Space Center tomorrow, we
would have a meeting and discuss whether we would want to bring up
Edwards for a Sunday opportunity or not. The weather right now looks
very good for a Kennedy Space Center landing tomorrow for both attempts.
... The forecast is for just a few clouds up to 25,000 feet, very good
visibility and just light winds out of the north."

   8:00 a.m. Update: Shuttle crew up for final full day in space

   The Endeavour astronauts were awakened at 7:48 a.m. to begin their
final full day in space. Today's wakeup music was a recording of "Bad To
The Bone" by George Thorogood and the Destroyers beamed up from mission
control in Houston.
   The astronauts face a relatively busy day in orbit, packing up loose
gear, finishing up on-board research and testing the shuttle's re-entry
systems to make sure they will be ready for use Saturday. The crew also
will make sure all the equipment and experiment samples moved from the
Mir station to Endeavour for return to Earth are properly stowed.
   The flight plan calls for the astronauts to begin deorbit
preparations at 12:30 p.m. Saturday. Endeavour's cargo bay doors will be
closed at 1:52 p.m. for a deorbit burn at 4:28 p.m. Touchdown at the
Kennedy Space Center is scheduled for 5:35:13 p.m.
  The first item on the agenda today is to test Endeavour's flight
control system to make sure the ship's avionics and hydraulic systems
are working as required. Commander Terry Wilcutt and pilot Joe Edwards
then will test fire the shuttle's steering jets. Cabin stowage begins at
4:23 p.m. and the shuttle's KU-band television antenna will be stowed at
7:48 p.m., ending routine television from the orbiter.
   The Associated Press and ABC Radio plan to interview the astronauts
at 3:15 p.m. in the final media event of mission STS-90. And finally,
NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin is scheduled to call the crew at 6:33
p.m. for a brief congratulatory chat.
   Aboard the Russian Mir space station, meanwhile, Mir-24 commander
Anatoly Solovyev, flight engineer Pavel Vinogradov and U.S. astronaut
Andrew Thomas jettisoned a trash-filled Progress supply vehicle today at
7:53 a.m., freeing up the station's Kvant-1 docking port for the arrival
Saturday of the Mir-25 crew aboard the Soyuz TM-27 spacecraft. Commander
Talgat Musabayev, flight engineer Nikolai Budarin and French researcher
Leopold Eyharts are expected to dock with Mir at 1:13 p.m. Saturday. The
docking and a welcoming ceremony will be carried live on NASA television
during Endeavour's de-orbit preparations.
   See the Breaking News page for a detailed timeline of upcoming events
aboard Mir.

===================================================================

Shuttle Endeavour undocks from Mir station (01/29/98)

   4:15 p.m. Update: NASA managers pleased with mission results

   The Endeavour astronauts are slowly but surely moving away from the
Mir space station, sailing into the home stretch of a successful mission
and setting their sights on landing Saturday at the Kennedy Space Center
at 5:35 p.m. At touchdown, returning Mir astronaut David Wolf will have
logged 127.8 days in space since blastoff to the Russian station last
September aboard the shuttle Atlantis.
   "So far, this has been an extremely successful mission, we're very
happy with the way it's gone," said Frank Culbertson, director of
shuttle-Mir operations for NASA. "We were able to transfer in both
directions 100 percent of the items we had planned on. We were able to
transfer even more water than had been planned so the Mir is well
stocked for future missions.
   "This continues to prove what people can do when they put their minds
to it, it gives us high hopes for the very complex program that is
coming down the road in the very near future, the beginning of the
international space station and the launch of those elements. It's going
to be very challenging. I believe we've proved the teams can work
together to meet those challenges and I hope and pray it increases
everyone's confidence that this will also be a successful program."
   With good weather expected Saturday in Florida, NASA is not staffing
Edwards Air Force Base in California. Endeavour will have two
opportunities to land Saturday at the Kennedy Space Center.
   "We're all looking forward to a very smooth last couple of days,"
said lead flight director Phil Engelauf. "The weather looks good for
entry on Saturday and we expect a very successful remainder of the
mission and a good landing."
   Here are the latest numbers (dv: change in velocity; dT: burn
duration):

   ORBIT...TIME............EVENT..............NOTES
   
   138.....04:27:42 p.m....Deorbit ignition...dV: 361 fps; dT: 3:28
   139.....05:35:13 p.m....Landing............Runway 15
   
   139.....06:07 p.m.......Deorbit ignition...TBD
   140.....07:11 p.m.......Landing............TBD

   With Endeavour's undocking and the launch of the Mir-25 crew a few
minutes earlier (see the 11:40 a.m. update below for additional detals),
U.S. and Russian flight controllers have their hands full tracking and
operating multiple vehicles in the same orbital plane. A fourth vehicle
will be added to the mix Friday when an old Progress resupply vehicle is
undocked from Mir to make way for the new crew.
   "Right now a stressful time has commenced at the Moscow mission
control center because literally 15 minutes prior to completion of its
operations with the shuttle the Soyuz was launched," said Valery Ryumin,
Culbertson's Russian counterpart. "So now the Moscow control center has
to worry about not only the operations of the Mir but also the Soyuz as
well as prepare for the undocking of the Progress cargo vehicle
tomorrow. Such a situation will certainly occur in the future in th
development and assembly of the international space station, so this
current work is good preparation of both men and machine to undertake
that endeavor."
   As mentioned below, satellite watchers in the United States will be
treated to a spectacular show this evening and Friday night, weather
permitting, as the spacecraft pass overhead. See the German Space
Operations Centre Satellite Tracking page to find out if any of the
vehicles will be visible from your location. 

   12:05 p.m. Update: Shuttle Endeavour undocks from Mir station

   The shuttle Endeavour undocked from the Mir space station today at
11:57 a.m., leaving U.S. astronaut Andrew Thomas behind for NASA's final
long-duration stay aboard the Russian outpost.
   "Houston, Endeavour. Physical separation. Executing sep burn," one of
the shuttle's crew members called at the moment of undocking.
   The flight plan called for Endeavour to drop 240 feet below Mir
before beginning a looping flyaround for a photo inspection. After
completing the loop, a rocket firing was planned to carry the shuttle
out of Mir's immediate vicinity. Landing at the Kennedy Space Center is
scheduled for 5:36 p.m. Saturday. See the 8:15 a.m. update below for a
timeline of flyaround activity.
   This was the eighth of nine joint shuttle-Mir missions serving as a
training ground before NASA and the Russian Space Agency begin building
the international space station later this year. Endeavour was docked
with Mir for four days 20 hours and 42 minutes. The final shuttle visit
is planned for late May when the Discovery will dock with Mir to pick up
Thomas and to drop off supplies and other equipment.
   NASA currently plans to begin building the international space
station in late June when a NASA-financed Russian-built module called
the functional cargo block (also known as the control module) is
launched. The first shuttle assembly flight is on tap the following
month when a six-hatch node is scheduled for takeoff aboard Endeavour
that will be bolted to one end of the functional cargo block.
   But both flights are expected to slip a few weeks, however, because
of problems readying a critical Russian component called the service
module for launch. The service module, which will provide the initial
crew quarters and propulsion for the new station, currently is scheduled
for flight in December. But launch is expected to be delayed to around
Feb. 2, 1999, because of problems with avionics and software
development. As a result, a shuttle supply flight now scheduled for
launch in December will slip to some point after the service module
reaches orbit in 1999.
   For a variety of reasons, including a desire to even out the shuttle
launch schedule, NASA is expected to slip the first station launch from
June to mid July and to delay the first shuttle assembly flight from
July to early September. No final decisions have been made, but that's
the current thinking, according to reliable NASA sources.

   11:40 a.m. Update: Mir-25 crew blasts off

   Mir-25 commander Talgat Musabayev, Nikolai Budarin and French
researcher Leopold Eyharts blasted off today from the Baikonur
Cosmodrome and set off after the Russian space station for a docking
Saturday. The Soyuz spacecraft blasted off at 11:33 a.m., just 23
minutes before the scheduled undocking of the U.S. space shuttle
Endeavour. If all goes well, Musabayev and company will dock at Mir's
Kvant-1 port at 1:13 p.m. Saturday, after a Progress resupply vehicle is
jettisoned Friday. Docking will be carried live on NASA television.
   Musabayev, Budarin and Eyharts will join Mir-24 commander Anatoly
Solovyev, flight engineer Pavel Vinogradov and U.S. astronaut Andrew
Thomas for about three weeks of joint activity. Around Feb. 19,
Solovyev, Vinogradov and Eyharts will return to Earth, leaving Thomas
behind with the Mir-25 crew. Thomas will return to Earth in June aboard
the shuttle Discovery.
   A detailed timeline of upcoming events aboard Mir, including upcoming
spacewalks, Progress flights and the next crew exchange, can be found on
the Breaking News page (future Mir-25 updates will be posted there as
well). To find out if Mir, the shuttle or the Progress vehicle will be
visible from your location over the next few days, check out the German
Space Operations Centre Satellite Tracking page.

   8:15 a.m. Update: Shuttle crew gears up for undocking

   The Endeavour astronauts are gearing up to undock from the Mir space
station later today at 11:56 a.m. Just 23 minutes earlier, at 11:33
a.m., Mir's next crew - Mir-25 commander Talgat Musabayev, Nikolai
Budarin and French researcher Leopold Eyharts - is scheduled to blast
off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in centra Asia. The trip to Mir will
take two days. After Endeavour departs, Mir-24 commander Anatoly
Solovyev, Pavel Vinogradov and new U.S. crew member Andrew Thomas will
make room for the new crew by undocking a used Progress resupply vehicle
Friday at 8 a.m. The Mir-25 crew is scheduled to dock at the Kvant-1
port at 1:13 p.m. Saturday. The Mir-25 launch and docking will be
carried live on NASA television.
   This is a somewhat unique situation in that four spacecraft will be
orbiting in the same plane Friday. Viewers in the United States will
have a good opportunity to watch one or more vehicles fly overhead after
sunset Thursday and Friday. Last night, the shuttle-Mir complex put on a
spectacular show for viewers in the Cape Canaveral area, starting out as
a relatively bright "star" and then flaring and becoming brighter than
Sirius or even Jupiter before moving into Earth's shadow. To find out if
Mir will be visible from your viewing location, go to the German Space
Operations Centre Satellite Tracking page and enter your location. Try
it out!
   Russian flight controllers have not yet decided what they will do
with the discarded Progress. It will either be deorbited or it will
remain in a parking orbit nearby until after Solovyev, Vinogradov and
Eyharts return to Earth around Feb. 19. The Progress may be redocked at
some point after that to provide shading for the Kvant-1 port and to
provide a bit more rocket fuel for the station. Will advise.
   Endeavour's crew plans to carry out a close flyaround of Mir after
undocking today. Starting at a point 240 feet directly below the Russian
station, pilot Joe Edwards will guide the shuttle directly in front of
Mir, then above the station, behind it and back down to the starting
point. A final separation burn to move Endeavour away from Mir for good
is scheduled for 1:16 p.m. Here's the latest timeline from mission
control in Houston:

      EST......EVENT
   
   11:48 a.m...Sunset. Mir in OSC-6 attitude. Shuttle in
               nose forward attitude
   11:52 a.m...Mir in contact with Russian ground station
   11:56 a.m...Endeavour undocks from Mir station
   12:05 p.m...Mir begins maneuver to flyaround attitude
   12:05 p.m...Shuttle 240 feet below Mir; begins
               stationkeeping
   12:16 p.m...Mir maneuver to flyaround attitude complete
   12:23 p.m...Sunrise
   12:30 p.m...Shuttle starts Twice Orbital Rate Flyaround
               (TORF) in nose-forward attitude
   12:36 p.m...Shuttle aligned with Mir +ZB axis (Priroda)
   12:42 p.m...Endeavour crosses directly in front of Mir
   12:47 p.m...Shuttle television begins
   12:52 p.m...Orbital noon
   12:52 p.m...Shuttle television ends
   12:43 p.m...Shuttle directly above Mir
   12:59 p.m...Shuttle aligned with Mir -XB axis (Soyuz)
   01:05 p.m...Endeavour crosses directly behind Mir
   01:16 p.m...Shuttle returns to a point directly below Mir
               Shuttle performs 3 foot-per-second retrograde
               separation burn
   01:21 p.m...Sunset

   Here's NASA's morning status report:

   EndeavourÕs astronauts are preparing to bid Mir farewell this morning
with a successful crew transfer and the exchange of more than 8,000
pounds of equipment and supplies behind them.
   U.S. Astronaut Andy Thomas will remain behind for four months of
research on the Russian outpost, the swan song of the Phase 1 Program
leading up to construction and population of the International Space
Station. Coming home will be Dave Wolf, who spent 119 days aboard Mir
and will have chalked up 128 days in orbit by the time he returns to
Earth aboard Endeavour on Saturday.
   Undocking is scheduled for 11:56 a.m. EST today, just 23 minutes
after the next Russian crew -- Mir 25 Commander Talgat Musabayev, Flight
Engineer Nikolai Budarin and French researcher Leopold Eyharts -- is
scheduled to blast off in a Soyuz TM-27 capsule from the Baikonur
Cosmodrome in Khazakstan. Musbayev and Budarin will dock with the
station Saturday and replace Mir 24 Commander Anatoly Solovey and Flight
Engineer Pavel Vinogradov, who are scheduled to return to Earth on Feb.
19 with Eyharts.
   Once the shuttle is free of its moorings, Commander Terry Wilcutt and
Pilot Joe Edwards will fly around the space station before completing a
separation burn at 1:16 p.m. EST to move Endeavour away from Mir.
   The Endeavour crew was awakened at 5:48 a.m. today to the song "Here
We Go Loopty-Loo," by Little Richard, played in honor of the STS-89
training team in Houston..
   The Endeavour-Mir space complex is orbiting the Earth at an altitude
of about 240 statute miles with all systems in excellent shape.

===================================================================

Hatches closed between Mir and shuttle Endeavour (01/28/98)

   5:40 p.m. Update: Hatches closed between Mir and shuttle Endeavour

   Hatches between the shuttle Endeavour and the Mir space station were
closed and dogged today, setting the stage for undocking Thursday at
11:56 a.m. to wrap up the eighth of nine planned shuttle-Mir linkups.
The hatch between Endeavour's Russian-built docking system and the
shuttle docking module on Mir was closed at 5:34 p.m., leaving U.S.
astronaut Andrew Thomas on his own aboard the station as a member of the
Mir-24 crew. If all goes well, he will return to Earth in June.
   "The stand-off cross is installed and the hatch is closed," commander
Terry Wilcutt told mission control in Houston.
   Mir-24 commander Anatoly Solovyev then was cleared to depressurize
the vestibule between the shuttle and Mir hatches. All that remains is
for Endeavour to undock Thursday.
   "We finished all the water transfers and essentially finished all our
hardware transfers to the Mir," said lead flight director Phil Engelauf.
"We will have, when we're all done, [transferred] about 1,615 pounds of
water, which is more than we expected pre-flight, and we transferred
essentially all the items that were intended to go across on Mir."
   James Van Laak, deputy director of the shuttle-Mir program, said the
combined crews accomplished all of the flight's objectives and "we're
very glad to be wrapping up another very successful docked mission."
   "I know we haven't had a lot of time to reflect on it yet, but we
can't escape the fact that this is our last docked mission where we plan
to transfer an American to the Mir," he said. "Just a few short years
ago, it seemed hard to believe we were actually going to go forward and
do this and now we've succeeded in doing this a number of times. We're
very pleased with that, it's been a wonderful program and we're looking
forward to one last very successful increment with Andy on board."
   The primary goal of Endeavour's mission was to pick up astronaut
David Wolf after four months aboard Mir and to replace him with Thomas,
the seventh and final U.S. astronaut scheduled for a long-duration stay
aboard Mir. In addition to supplying Mir with fresh water, the
astronauts also delivered nearly 1,000 pounds of U.S. science gear and
more than 3,000 pounds of Russian equipment and supplies. Nearly 3,000
pounds of equipment and experiment samples will be returned to Earth
aboad the shuttle.
   "This has been an amazing experience," Wolf said at an afternoon news
conference. "It's been one of the hardest of my life and I think Andy
can expect the same but that's how the best experiences of our lives
must be in many cases. ... I have to say, we're bringing together two of
the finest space-faring nations in the world and the results that we're
going to get as we join forces in the international space station are
going to be amazing. All of our countries will take part in this and
enjoy this and will share in it and the results will design our future
quality of life."
   Endeavour is scheduled to land at the Kennedy Space Center at 5:36
p.m. Saturday and the preliminary forecast calls for good weather.
Despite spending four months in the weightlessness of space, Wolf said
he doesn't anticipate any problems thanks to routine workouts on Mir's
treadmill.
   "When you're in space, you feel like a superman, you can lift a
refrigerator with your baby finger, so I feel pretty good and we've been
working out pretty hard," Wolf said. "I expect to be able to walk off
that shuttle if the scientific community will let me. I'm looking for a
pretty quick recovery."
   For Thomas, Endeavour's undocking Thursday will mark "a day of mixed
feelings for me because on the one hand the shuttle is leaving and the
friends that I've been with will be leaving and flying home."
   "But on the other hand, I'll be staying here and starting what will
be a new phase of my life doing probably what is one of the most unusual
things anybody could do in this the last part of the 20th Century," he
said. "So although they're leaving, it now gives me the opportunity to
start this adventure that I'm on. It's time to get on with the work and
that's what I'm ready to do."
   He said his first priority will be to make himself a home in Mir's
Priroda module.
   "I haven't been able to do that yet because all we've spent our time
doing is bringing all the equipment on board," Thomas said. "And right
now, there are lots of bags and stowage equipment and so on in there. It
looks like a crowded broom closet that hasn't been cleaned out in 20
years."

   3:30 p.m. Update: Shuttle crew remembers Challenger

   The crew of the shuttle Endeavour took a moment last night to
remember the fallen crew of the shuttle Challenger, killed 12 years ago
today in history's worst space disaster. Endeavour commander Terry
Wilcutt said crewmate Bonnie Dunbar reminded the astronauts of the
Challenger anniversary and today, flight controllers in Houston also
marked the moment at 11:38 a.m. when Challenger began its final voyage.

   3:30 p.m. Update: Thomas says langauge skills need work

   U.S. astronaut Andrew Thomas, embarking on a four-month stay aboard
the Mir space station, says he does not yet speak Russian as fluently as
he might like and that it may be difficult for him initially to
establish the kind of personal relationship with his crewmates that he
might wish. But during a news conference today, the man Thomas is
replacing, astronaut David Wolf, said Thomas will have plenty of time to
brush up on his Russian.
   "I can assure you the space station Mir is a great place to learn
Russian," Wolf joked.
   The language issue came up earlier when Mir-25 commander Talgat
Musabayev, scheduled for launch to Mir on Thursday, told reporters he
was a bit concerned about Thomas's language skills. Musabayev, Nikolai
Budarin and French researcher Leopold Eyharts are scheduled to blast off
from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 11:33 a.m. EST Thursday. Docking with
Mir is expected at 1:13 p.m. Saturday.
   "I wish my Russian was better because I'd like to have the
spontaneity of communication that helps you establish a working
relationship," Thomas said from orbit. "I think it will slow us down a
bit, particularly initially, but I think after a while we'll learn a
basis for communication that will be acceptable."
   Thomas never expected to actually fly on Mir. He was training as a
backup to Wolf, who originally was to be NASA's last long-duration Mir
visitor. But Wolf was moved up in the flight sequence last year when
astronaut Wendy Lawrence was bumped from flight status because of her
height and Thomas suddenly found himself assigned to the final mission.
   "I would have liked to have had more extensive language training
before I went to Russia," he said. "But within the schedules we had back
then it simply wasn't possible."
   Mir-24 commander Anatoly Solovyev said as far as he was concerned,
Thomas fit in aboard Mir just fine.
   "There may indeed be some problems," he said. Then, turning to
Thomas, he added: "However, in the several days we have worked together,
I have not seen any problems. I am telling you this without any
reservations, you speak very well and I agree with Dave Wolf that this
is an excellent environment for the learning of a language."
   As for Musabayev, Thomas said he was sure the new crew would enjoy
each other's company.
   "Not being able to have spontaneous, joking, humorouse sort of
interaction with people can limit your ability to establish a
relationship," Thomas said. "But the Mir-25 crew that coming up here
shortly are very congenial people, very easy to get along with. Talgat
himself has got a very effusive personality to say the least and I'm
expecting it to be entirely entertaining."

   8:15 a.m. Update: Joint crews gear up for undocking

   The Endeavour-Mir astronauts are in the final stages of transferring
supplies and equipment to and from the Russian space station before
undocking Thursday morning. After a joint crew news conference at 2:34
p.m. today, hatches between Mir and the space shuttle will be closed and
locked for undocking.
   At that point, astronaut Andrew Thomas will be on his own aboard Mir,
in the care of Mir-24 commander Anatoly Solovyev and flight engineer
Pavel Vinogradov. Thomas and the man he replaced, David Wolf, are
spending a final few hours together today reviewing radio operations and
protocol and discussing a few last-minute tips about living and working
aboard the Russian space station.
   "I think it's going OK," Thomas told flight controllers. "I still
need him to give me an education o the packet radio and the ham radio.
And I think pretty much I'll need to be on my own to take care of
everything else."
   Said Wolf: "He's catching on real quick. He's going to be a strong
player up here."
   The original plan called for the cosmonauts to close the hatch
between the Kristall module and the shuttle docking module this
afternoon and for the shuttle crew to close their hatch Thursday, after
delivering a final bag of fresh water to Mir. But flight controllers
said all the work would be completed by this afternoon and all the
hatches will be closed at that point.
   Quotes and details from this afternoon's crew news conference will be
posted here as soon as possible. In the meantime, here's this morning's
status report from NASA: 

   The astronauts and cosmonauts on board the Endeavour/Mir complex are
now in their final full day of docked operations, wrapping up the
transfer of equipment and supplies between the two spacecraft.
   The crews have already transferred about 240 items with a total mass
of more than three and half tons between the shuttle and Mir, and they
have completed more than 80 percent of the planned moves. The crew will
take a break from their work at 2:34 p.m. EST today to participate in a
press conference, fielding questions from reporters at NASA centers
across the U.S. and in Moscow, Russia.
   Immediately following the press conference, the Endeavour crew will
say a formal farewell to astronaut Andy Thomas, embarking on the final
stay by a U.S. astronaut aboard the Mir, and cosmonauts Anatoly Solovyev
and Pavel Vinagradov. At about 5:18 p.m. EST, the crews will close the
hatches between the spacecraft for the final time. Both the Mir and
Endeavour hatches will be closed for the fnal time at that point, before
the crew goes to sleep this evening, as has been the normal procedure
for previous Shuttle-Mir flights. An earlier plan that had been
discussed to leave the shuttleís hatch to the Mir docking module open
longer to allow for last-minute transfers was deemed unnecessary by
flight controllers.
   The STS-89 crew was awakened at 5:48 a.m. EST today to the song
"Hideaway" performed by Stanley Clarke, a favorite tune of astronaut
Michael Anderson. The crew will begin an eight-hour sleep period at 9:48
p.m. EST and will receive a wake-up call from Mission Control at 5:48
a.m. on Thursday to begin activities to undock from the Mir.
   Endeavour, carrying home astronaut David Wolf after four months spent
aboard the Mir, is scheduled to undock from the Russian station at 11:56
a.m. EST Thursday.

===================================================================

Shuttle crew wraps up logistics transfer (01/27/98)

   5 p.m. Update: Endeavour astronauts set for undocking

   The Endeavour astronauts are in the final stages of transferring
supplies, water and repair equipment from the shuttle to the Mir space
station, setting the stage for undocking Thursday.
   Current plans call for Mir's crew to shut the hatch between the
station's Kristall module and the shuttle docking module Wednesday
afternoon. The docking module will remain open to the shuttle crew until
Thursday morning. This is slightly different from past practice and it's
being done in part so Mir's crew can pump up the station's oxygen
supplies with what's left aboard an old Progress supply vehicle
currently docked at the Kvant-1 port. The station has to be sealed off
from the shuttle for that operation because the Mir system works at
higher oxygen concentrations than the shuttle can handle.
   While that's going on, the shuttle crew will generate a final, 16th
bag of water for Mir, leaving it in the docking module Wednesday night
or Thursday morning. The crew then will seal the shuttle's hatch and the
Russians will re-enter the docking module from Kristall to retrieve the
water and configure the station for undocking. If all goes well,
Endeavour will drop away from Mir at 11:56 a.m. Thursday.
   "It may look a little unusual, but we will do the final farewells for
the crew on the last part of the day tomorrow as we have done in the
past," said flight director Phil Engelauf. "Then we'll be undocking the
middle of that next day and performing a brief flyaround, one time
around Mir, and then breaking away."
   The Progress, meanwhile, is scheduled to be jettisoned Friday to make
way for the arrival of the Mir-25 crew the next day. Mir-25 commander
Talgat Musabayev, Nikolai Budarin and French researcher Leopold Eyharts
are scheduled to blast off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 11:33 a.m.
EST Thursday. Both launch and docking will be carried live on NASA
television. 
   "The crew is at Baikonur along with their support crew," said Frank
Culbertson, director of shuttle-Mir operations for NASA. "They are ready
to go, there are no issues that they're working and they expect to be on
schedule."
   As for the state of the station, "the Russians will be well stocked
by the time we leave," Culbertson said. "Overall, they're in real good
shape. Most of the major items have been transferred, such as the air
conditioning components, the computers, the gyrodynes, things like that.
We're looking forward to the undocking, which will occur this Thursday.
We're going to have quite an interesting event when we launch the Soyuz,
undock the shuttle, undock a Progress and then dock a Soyuz all within
about a two- or three-day period. So we'll eventually have four
spacecraft all flying in the same plane."
   Here is a timeline of events for Endeavour's undocking and flyaround
Thursday:

   EST.........MET.......EVENT
   
   11:48 a.m...6/14:00...Sunset. Mir in OSC-6 attitude. Shuttle in
                         nose forward attitude
   11:52 a.m...6/14:04...AOS DJS groundstation (6/14:04:05)
   11:56 a.m...6/14:08...Endeavour undocks from Mir station
   12:05 p.m...6/14:17...Shuttle 240 feet below Mir; begins
                         stationkeeping
   12:05 p.m...6/14:17...Mir maneuvers to flyaround attitude
   12:11 p.m...6/14:23...Undocking window closes
   12:19 p.m...6/14:31...Mir reaches flyaround attitude
   12:20 p.m...6/14:32...Latest time for shuttle to reach 240 feet
   12:22 p.m...6/14:34...Sunrise
   12:30 p.m...6/14:42...Shuttle starts Twice Orbital Rate Flyaround
                         (TORF) in nose-forward attitude
   12:35 p.m...6/14:47...Shuttle aligned with Mir +ZB axis (Priroda)
   12:41 p.m...6/14:53...Endeavour crosses directly in front of Mir
   12:48 p.m...6/15:00...Shuttle Ku-band communications available until
                         approximately 12:53 p.m.
   12:52 p.m...6/15:04...Orbital noon
   12:53 p.m...6/15:05...Shuttle crosses directly above Mir. KU-band
                         antenna switched to radar mode
   12:58 p.m...6/15:10...Shuttle aligned with Mir -XB axis (Soyuz)
   01:04 p.m...6/15:16...Endeavour crosses directly behind Mir
   01:16 p.m...6/15:28...Shuttle returns to a point directly below Mir
                         Shuttle performs 3 foot-per-second retrograde
                         separation burn
   01:21 p.m...6/15:33...Sunset

   "We have looked at the traffic management concerns of having the
Progress and having the shuttle all flying at the same time and the
Soyuz coming up," Engelauf said. "And while it's a little bit complex
and you have to keep track of all the vehicles and what all the possible
options are ... it's a manageable problem and we don't really have any
concerns."
   In one final bit of news, Engelauf said an unusual problem with
Endeavour's vernier steering jets Monday night was caused by an
unforeseen set of mission-specific circumstances. The electronic system
that fires the jets refused to power up properly because of a
configuration problem, that is, the sequence in which the verniers and
the shuttle's primary jets were powered up and down earlier in the
mission. Engelauf said the condition had never occurred before and that
it only occurred this time because of the way the jets were activated to
control the orientation of the shuttle-Mir complex. This one is still a
bit murky, at least to this writer, but Engelauf said no harm was done
and if the condition occurred again, flight controllers would be able to
quickly correct it.

   2:30 p.m. Update: Crew on track with Mir transfer work

   The Endeavour astronauts and their Mir-24 colleagues have transferred
more than 1,000 items from the shuttle to the Mir station and vice versa
during the first three days of joint activity. All told, the combined
10-member crew plans to move some 4,500 pounds of fresh water, supplies,
repair gear and other equipment to Mir, including a new air conditioner.
   "We have been very, very busy and I think we're ahead of schedule,"
commander Terry Wilcutt told an interviewer today. "We did take a couple
of days to get here, to get things organized, and the docking went
extremely well from our point of view."
   James Reilly, the astronaut in charge of overseeing the transfer
work, said that by midday Tuesday, "we've managed to transfer just about
everything."
   "We've got over 1,000 items we've already transferred and we're just
cleaning up the last ones right now," he said. "The air conditioning
unit fortunately fit through the hatch with just a little bit of elbow
grease. It worked fine."
   Andrew Thomas, who is replacing David Wolf aboard Mir as NASA's
seventh and final long-duration crew member, said he is settling in for
the long haul and that so far, the only surprise has been just how
crowded the Russian space station is.
   "There's an awful lot of stuff in Mir," Thomas said. "I mean we've
got stuff stowed in every nook and cranny on this vehicle and there's
very little storage space. And that's the biggest surprise I've come
across is just how restricted we are on free storage space."
   As for initial problems getting his emergency pressure suit to fit,
"the suit problem was real," he said. "I couldn't get it on. I tried
with Anatoly, the commander here, several times to get it on and it was
just impossible until we made the adjustments and then it went on fine.
No, I'm prepared to undertake this mission now and I'm looking forward
to setting up a home in the Priroda module and getting some personal
things out and making it liveable and starting a new adventure."
   Wolf has been helping Thomas get adjusted to living and working
aboard Mir.
   "There's a lot of equipment here to learn how to work," Wolf said.
"We've had training on the ground but of course, it's a little different
in actual use. But there're a lot of hints on how to live, how to be
efficient, how to keep track of your items, in fact, how to keep out of
each other's way and to help each other. I've learned a lot about how
these cosmonauts like to live and I'm trying to pass that knowledge on
to Andy."

   8:00 a.m. Update: Astronauts move into home stretch of equipment
transfers

   The Endeavour astronauts were awakened at 5:48 a.m. today by a
recording of "Clap for the Wolfman" beamed up from mission control.
There is little to report so far this morning as the crew steps into a
third day of moving supplies and equipment to and from the Mir space
station. The combined crews will participate in U.S. and Russian media
interviews starting at 12:48 p.m. and notes will be posted here as soon
as possible thereafter. In the meantime, here is NASA's morning status
report:

   More resupply and experiment equipment transfers lay ahead for the
astronauts and cosmonauts who have now passed the halfway point in their
resupply work. By the end of flight day 5, 60 percent of all planned
transfers had been completed including just over 1,000 pounds of water
manufactured by Endeavourís fuel cells.
   Coming up late Tuesday morning is an interview with Cable News
Network and Russian news media. That event is scheduled to start at
12:48 a.m. EST Tuesday.
   Yesterday marked the successful resolution of a couple of problems
which had come up unexpectedly on Sunday. A software change was sent to
Endeavourís computers Monday to overcome a faulty sensor which monitors
the condition of one of the orbiterís attitude control thrusters. That
thruster sensor late Sunday had caused Shuttle flight controllers to
temporarily pass attitude control of the Shuttle-Mir stack to the
Russian station. When Mir thruster propellant ran low, control was
passed back to Endeavour. All of this activity consumed some of the
crewís sleep time, which was extended by Mission Control.
   Also Monday, Mir 24 crewmember Andy Thomas, with the aid of his Mir
commander Anatoly Solovyev, successfully modified the Soyuz Sokol
spacesuit he carried to orbit, improving the fit. Initially, Thomas had
been unable to seal the suit which appeared too small for him. Thomas
detached straps which lengthened the suit sufficiently to allow a
comfortable fit under both pressurized and non-pressurized conditions.
He would wear the suit only in the event he were to return to Earth on
board a Soyuz spacecraft.

===================================================================

Thomas suit issue resolved; shuttle electrical problem (01/26/98)

   10:00 p.m. Update: Shuttle electrical problem interrupts attitude
control

   An electrical glitch of some sort temporarily forced the shuttle
Endeavour's crew to shut down the orbiter's small steering jets tonight,
allowing the combined shuttle-Mir complex to slowly drift out of the
proper orientation. While docked with Mir, the shuttle's small vernier
jets are used to control the orientation, or attitude, of the combined
vehicles. The station must fly in an orientation that maximizes sunlight
on its solar arrays and by using the shuttle for that purpose during
docking missions, the Russians are able to save on-board fuel. When the
vernier jets shut down tonight, the station began slowly drifting out of
the proper attitude.
   After a bit of troubleshooting, engineers told shuttle commander
Terry Wilcutt to power up all of the shuttle's maneuvering jets with the
idea of using the larger primary reaction control system thrusters to
take over attitude control. This is not an ideal solution because the
primary jets burn more fuel and put more stress on the docked vehicles.
In any case, when the drivers for all the jets were powered up, the
vernier system once again appeared to be acting normally. The smaller
jets were then used to stop the unwanted motion of the shuttle-Mir
complex and the crew was told to use the primary jets to quickly move
the vehicles back into the proper orientation.
   This was the second night in a row in which trouble with the
shuttle's vernier jet system required corrective action. Late Monday, a
faulty sensor on a jet in Endeavour's left rear orbital maneuvering
system pod forced the crew to turn attitude control over to Mir. But
limited fuel aboard Mir forced the shuttle crew to resume attitude
control even though the sensor failure prevented automatic leak
detection. That problem was corrected today when a software patch was
uplinked to the shuttle to permit normal operations. This cause of this
evening's problem was not immediately known.

   5:30 p.m. Update: Thomas suit problem resolved

   After fiddling with adjustment straps, U.S. astronaut Andrew Thomas
finally managed to squeeze into his Russian-built emergency re-entry
suit today, assuring he can safely remain aboard Mir after the shuttle
Endeavour departs Thursday. Thomas officially joined the crew of Mir-24
commander Anatoly Solovyev and Pavel Vinogradov at 6:35 p.m. Sunday,
some nine hours behind schedule because of problems with the suit. All
Mir crew members must have a pressure suit and a custom Soyuz seatliner
in case of an emergency that might force them to evacuate Mir and return
to Earth. Thomas's seatliner was no problem, but he was unable to
squeeze into his re-entry suit. He then tried on David Wolf's suit and
while it was too big in the arms, mission managers cleared him to join
Mir's crew anyway. Additional troubleshooting today resolved the problem
once and for all.
   "The suit that I would wear in the event of needing to do an
emergency evacuation in the Soyuz wasn't quite sized properly," Thomas
told an interviewer today. "And when I tried it on yesterday to do a
pressure test of the suit, it wouldn't fit, I couldn't get it on. This
morning we made some adjustments in some straps on the suit and after we
did that I was able to don and doff the suit properly and we did the
pressure checks and it worked out fine. So I feel good about it."
   In other news, a software patch has been uplinked to the Endeavour
that will enable its flight computers to detect thruster leaks despite a
faulty transducer in one jet. The sensor failed last night and with no
way to detect a real leak in that jet, the shuttle had to stop providing
normal attitude control of the shuttle-Mir complex. But Russian
engineers soon determined Mir did not have enough fuel in its boom jets
to continue controlling the orientation of the combined vehicles and
Endeavour resumed attitude control. With the software patch on board,
the situation is back to normal. 
   The problem with Thomas's entry suit would appear to be a rather
straight-forward issue. But according to The Associated Press, Russian
space officials were miffed that Thomas said the suit did not fit
properly. The AP quoted Victor Blagov, deputy chief of Russian mission
control, as saying there was never anything wrong with Thomas's suit.
Here is a passage from the AP story:

   Russia's Mission Control was steamed at the suggestion that its
tailors screwed up. The Russians all but called Thomas a malcontent.
   "There were no objective problems with his spacesuit," grumbled
Viktor Blagov, deputy chief of Mission Control. "The astronaut simply
turned out to be somewhat capricious. For us, it's a symptom that the
astronaut may remain capricious all through the flight."
   Russian spacewear expert Alexander Yarov said that after 37 years of
manned spaceflight, Russians are masters at making orbital attire. In
fact, he said huffily, they take the time to offer flight suits, shoes _
even underwear _ in bright blue, green and red to jazz up Mir's drab
interior.

   One strongly suspects a bit of artistic license at work here. It is
difficult for this writer to imagine a top Russian space official
speaking so harshly - in public, no less! - about a brand new U.S. crew
member! For their part, NASA managers flatly denied the AP account.
   "Victor has in fact pointedly denied having said those things," said
James Van Laak, deputy director of shuttle-Mir oeprations at the Johnson
Space Center. "There have been a few questions directed at him to see
whether he really intended that. In addition, it's been made clear to
us, Mr. [Valery] Ryumin made it clear, that the Russian side has great
confidence in Andy."
   Lead flight director Phil Engelauf agreed.
   "I had a teleconference with Victor Blagov this morning over the
loops, about 4:30 local time here," Engelauf said. "We talked both about
the propellant situation on Mir and the attitude control problem as well
as the suit situation here. It was fairly clear the Russians were very
comfortable with the situation with the suit and wanted to make sure we
here in the U.S. were comfortable with the situation.
   "At no time in the course of probably a 30- or 40-minute telephone
conversation did Victor ever mention any concerns or indications that
Andy was either the source of the problem or in any way personally
responsible for the way this came out," Engelauf said. "If the
individual can't fit inside the spacesuit it's probably not the person's
fault. It's clearly a mismatch between the suit size and the
individual."
   And wire copy to the contrary, NASA managers never thought Thomas's
mission aboard Mir was in any jeopardy because of the suit issue.
 "We never considered it a serious possibility he might not be able to
stay," Van Laak said. "We had the option of trying to shorten the arms
on Dave's [suit]  or extending the legs on Andy's. We were very
confident there would be a successful resolution today."

===================================================================

Thomas joins Mir crew; shuttle gives up, resumes attitude control
(01/25-26/98)

   7:30 a.m., 01/26/98, Update: Endevour resumes attitude control for
shuttle-Mir complex

   With Mir running low on fuel, flight controllers awakened shuttle
pilot Joe Edwards around 2:15 a.m. this morning so he could rig
Endeavour to resume attitude control of the shuttle-Mir complex. Late
Sunday, a faulty sensor indicating a thruster leak aboard Endeavour
forced flight controllers to switch control of the complex over to Mir.
The thruster was working properly, engineers determined, but the faulty
sensor meant a real leak could go undetected (see the 11:30 p.m. update
below for details).
   Engineers said it would take 24 hours or so to develop a software
patch to work around the faulty sensor. Meanwhile, with Mir in control
of the "stack," the station crew went back to bed and the shuttle crew
soon followed. But early this morning, Russian flight controllers
decided the station was low on fuel for its outboard "boom" thrusters.
   "Flight controllers in the U.S. and Russia worked together and
decided that, with good communications contact, mission control could
watch Endeavour's thruster and the shuttle could resume control,"
according to NASA's morning status report. "The ground awakened pilot
Joe Edwards about 2:15 a.m. EST. Edwards and commander Terry Wilcutt
woke the Mir crew and attitude control handover back to Endeavour was
accomplished in a few minutes. To compensate for keeping the crew up
late, the planning team in mission control added an hour to the crew's
sleep period and worked to lighten the work load for flight day five."

   11:30 p.m., 01/25/98, Update: Mir takes over attitude control

   An apparently faulty sensor indicating a leak in a shuttle
maneuvering jet late tonight forced Endeavour's crew to turn over
attitude control of the combined shuttle-Mir complex to the Russian
space station. The station normally orients itself to provide maximum
sunlight for its solar panels but when docked with the shuttle, the U.S.
spacecraft provides attitude control for both vehicles to help the
Russians save fuel.
   While controllers do not believe the jet in question (L5D) is
leaking, the apparently faulty sensor is preventing them from detecting
a real leak. That's a violation of safety rules and as a result, flight
controllers called Endeavour commander Terry Wilcutt just before 11 p.m.
and asked him to set up a radio relay to Mir so Russian ground
controllers could wake up the station crew and switch attitude control
over to Mir. A software patch to correct the problem with the faulty
sensor should be in place late Monday or early Tuesday, allowing the
shuttle to resume normal control.
   In the meantime, the shuttle-Mir complex drifted slowly out of its
ideal orientation - as one would expect without active attitude control
- but this was not considered a major problem. U.S. and Russian flight
controllers developed a plan for Endeavour's jets to reorient the
complex before switching normal attitude control over to the station.

   7:00 p.m. Update: NASA, Russian managers reverse themselves; clear
Thomas to join Mir crew

   In a bit of a surprise, NASA and Russian managers changed their minds
late today and cleared astronaut Andrew Thomas to go ahead and replace
David Wolf aboard the Mir space station this evening. The crew transfer
officially took place at 6:35 p.m. Earlier, agency managers told Wolf
and Thomas to delay the formal transfer for at least one additional day
because of problems with the pressure suit Thomas would have to wear
during an emergency return to Earth aboard the crew's Soyuz entry
vehicle (see the 5:30 p.m. update below for details).
   But after additional analysis, Russian managers told their NASA
counterparts they were satisfied that in a pinch, Thomas could wear
Wolf's pressure suit even though the arms are too long. Thomas said
earlier the arms extended six inches beyond his hands when the suit was
pressurized. But Russian officials said later there was nothing the
American astronaut would have to do aboard a Soyuz that would require
the use of his hands and that it was safe for Thomas to go ahead and
join the Mir-24 crew.
   Additional work will be done Monday to adjust the fit of Thomas's
suit or to shorten the sleeves on Wolf's. NASA managers are optimistic
the problem will be resolved and in the meantime, the crew swap is
official and Thomas is spending his first night aboard Mir. Wolf, now a
member of the shuttle crew, will sleep aboard Endeavour for the
remainder of the flight.

   5:30 p.m. Update: Mir crew swap delay forces Wolf to spend additional
night on Mir

   U.S. astronaut David Wolf, in the final stages of a 128-day space
voyage, has ben forced to spend one more night aboard the Russian Mir
space station because of pressure suit problems that prevented his
replacement, astronaut Andrew Thomas, from moving in today on schedule.
The formal crew swap out likely will take place Monday, after additional
troubleshooting to either adjust Thomas's ill-fitting pressure suit or a
decision to use Wolf's instead.
   Before a new crew member can move in aboard the space station, he or
she must be able to return to Earth aboard Mir's Soyuz entry vehicle in
an emergency. To do so, each crew member must have a custom seatliner in
place to cushion ground impact and a pressure suit. As with all arriving
U.S. astronauts bound for Mir, Thomas's seatliner and pressure suit were
carried aloft aboard Endeavour. The flight plan called for both to be
transferred to Mir this morning and for Thomas to officially replace
Wolf. From that point on, Thomas would be a member of the Mir-24 crew,
sleeping on the station and remaining aboard even if an emergency of
some sort forced the shuttle to leave early.
   But Thomas ran into problems today with his pressure suit.
   "The problem is I cannot pull it up over my shoulders," he radioed.
"It's either not sized correctly or there's not been adequate allowance
for the growth of my height in zero gravity. And I suspect it's probably
both. We did do a pressure test, a leak check, in David's [suit] and the
leak check passed. I can get David's suit on with difficulty. The
problem is when it's under pressure, the arms extend about six inches
off the ends of my hands. So it's basically unusable, in that
configuration at least."
   He said Mir-24 commander Anatoly Solovyev wants to try resizing
Thomas's original suit.
   "The straps on the legs and the underarms are pulled up, cinched up,
very tight and stitched that way," Thomas said. "So we can't just
release them, we actually have to cut the stitching, non-critical
stitching that won't affect the sealing of the suit. But I think we
ought to try and do that to get some more shoulder, spine length, into
my suit and then see if I can get it on maybe tomorrow."
   In the meantime, the crew asked mission control who should sleep
where.
   "This is David," Wolf called. "Just wondering, if we have to
separate, we'd just like to know which side we're supposed to go to."
   "We're still discussing the answer to your question about what our
situation is right now in terms of where each of you would come home in
an emergency," replied Ellen Ochoa from mission control. "We'd like to
get Andy's thoughts on the viability of using Dave's suit in an
emergency right now if he needed to, whether he thinks he would be able
successfully carry out the full extent of an emergency deorbit using
Dave's suit or not."
   Thomas said he and Solovyev agreed that Thomas could spend the night
on Mir with Wolf's suit available for emergency use. But flight
controllers in Houston at in Moscow were not comfortable with that idea.
   "Andy, we've decided that for tonight we'd like to have you sleep on
the shuttle," Ochoa radioed. "We would like Dave to sleep on the Mir.
That's going to require reinstalling Dave's seatliner in the Soyuz. We
really decided that because that is really the only configuration right
now that is known with everybody feeling completely comfortable about
all the safety considerations. So we want to go to that configuration
while we're pursuing other options."

   2:15 p.m. Update: Mir crew swap delayed

   Problems of some sort with the pressure suit U.S. astronaut Andrew
Thomas would have to wear during an emergency return to Earth from the
Russian Mir space station delayed his formal installation today as a
member of the Mir-24 crew. Thomas had been scheduled to formally replace
astronaut David Wolf aboard Mir at 9:48 a.m., but Mir-24 commander
Anatoly Solovyev asked for a delay when problems cropped up with
Thomas's entry suit.
   A Mir crew member can only be replaced after his or her custom Soyuz
seatliner is transferred to the station's entry vehicle and after the
astronaut has tested the suit that would be used in a Soyuz re-entry.
The seatliner, which is custom built to support an astronaut in his or
her entry suit, would be needed to cushion the shock of ground impact if
the Mir crew was forced to bail out in the Soyuz at some point after the
shuttle's departure.
   Because of the problem with Thomas's suit, the crew was expected to
re-install Wolf's seatliner and to find out if Thomas can use portions
of Wolf's suit. As soon as the problem is resolved, Thomas will join
Solovyev's crew and begin sleeping aboard Mir. Wolf then will take his
place aboard Endeavour.
   Wolf, wrapping up a 128-day stay in space, says he's looking forward
to a hot pepperoni pizza and "a few beverages" when he gets his feet
back on planet Earth. In an interview with CBS News today, Wolf said
he's looking forward to "everything I think of, even driving my car up
to a Stop and Go and walking in and getting a coffee. Every little thing
I think of is something I can't wait to go do. Earth is a wonderful
place."
   Thomas is scheduled to remain aboard Mir until June when he will
return to Eart aboard the shuttle Discovery. Thomas is the seventh and
final U.S. astronaut scheduled for a long-duration stay aboard Mir
before assembly of the international space station begins later this
summer.
   "It's time to pass the baton to Andy," Wolf said. "He's a very
capable astronaut and he's ready for the experience of his life. It'll
be tough but it'll be great."
   The tough part, Wolf said, is coping with one's emotions in the
isolated environment of the Russian space station. Asked if he ever felt
lonely or depressed, Wolf said "to some degree, yes, I did."
   "You have to keep a good, rational grip on your mind to hold those
feelings at bay," he said. "This is something Andy and I will be
discussing and prior crews helped me with that. There's somewhat of a
language barrier where you can't express all the feelings you'd like to
even though we can communicate operationally quite well. So those
feelings are a big part of this kind of a mission."
   Asked what surprised him the most about life aboard Mir, Wolf said "I
honestly was surprised at just how much work it really is."
   "We really worked from nine in the morning until midnight, every day,
seven days a week, holidays included," he said. "That's what it takes to
really operate a space station and conduct a full science program. It
really didn't hurt once you get to expect that type of work level. It's
just what you do in space."
   In the meantime, "I've requested a pizza with pepperoni and mushrooms
and I think a few beverages will go along fine with that."
   Thomas said he believes he is psychologically prepared for his stay
aboard Mir, but he agreed it could pose problems.
   "It is going to be isolated," he said. "You know, you think you're
going to be psychologically prepared but things often turn around and
surprise you. I'll have to give you my response as to how I feel after
the event of seeing Endeavour leave. But I think it's going to be
tough."
   That will be in part because of Mir's cramped interior.
   "The thing that strikes me the most is unlike the training modules I
saw in Russia, there's an awful lot of equipment stored on the walls, on
the floor and on the ceiling in here and as a consequence, there's not
as much space," Thomas said. "And that's the thing I'm going to notice
the most, I think, is there is not as much working volume as I
anticipated."
   But it won't be all work and no play. A classical guitar player,
Thomas said "we've got music up here, we've got CDs, we've got CD-ROMs,
we've got video films so we've got those as entertainment. We've got
exercise machines up here so we can exercise. There's even a guitar up
here so we can play a guitar if we get a chance."
   And in case anyone is wondering, yes, the astronauts are keeping up
with the latest news from Washington along with everyone else.
   "We get news from home each day in the version of email we have up
here," said commander Terry Wilcutt. "It's such a mental break to read
news from home, we're able to keep up with what goes on on the sports
field and in Washington."

===================================================================

Shuttle Endeavour docks with Mir space station (01/24/98)

   7:00 p.m. Update: NASA managers elated with smooth Mir docking

   NASA managers said this afternoon's shuttle docking with the Mir
space station was virtually flawless and that the combined crews should
have no trouble meeting all of their pre-launch objectives. The only
problem of any significance involved misconfigured valves in the
vestibule between the shuttle and Mir that delayed hatch opening by
about 15 or 20 minutes.
   The valves in question were set before launch and should have been in
the closed position. At least one was open and when routine checks were
carried out prior to hatch opening, the vestibule failed to hold
pressure. The crew then powered up the switches, set them correctly and
pressed ahead with no further problems.
   "We did have a set of valves that were misconfigured," said lead
flight director Phil Engelauf. "It was a simple procedure to close those
valves and then everything after that went just fine. My team did a real
good job, [commander Terry Wilcutt's] team did a fantastic job as well
and everything has gone just perfectly on this flight up to this point.
With us now docked, we're ready to press on with the transfers and
payload operations and we don't see any obstacles to a completely
successful mission."
   Frank Culbertson, manager of the shuttle-Mir docking program, said
Mir is in good condition, "it's operating very well and it of course
held attitude very well for us."
   "I think the Russian public is probably very proud of their crew up
there," he said. "It has brought the Mir back into good shape, they've
added systems, repaired systems, performed very, very well during this
mission. And Dave Wolf as a part of that, I think, is very proud of
having participated in that mission and is anxious to come home and tell
everybody about it."

   6:00 p.m. Update: Shuttle crew welcomed aboard Mir station

   Mir-24 commander Anatoly Solovyev and his crew welcomed the shuttle
Endeavour's crew aboard the Mir space station today after floating into
the shuttle's docking module and happily hugging and shaking hands with
their long-awaited NASA visitors. Shuttle skipper Terry Wilcutt cranked
open a final hatch between the two spacecraft at 5:24 p.m. following a
picture-perfect docking a little more than two hours earlier.
   "You guys look great. You guys look wonderful. This is really fun!"
said U.S. astronaut David Wolf, launched to Mir last September aboard
the shuttle Atlantis. "Thanks for coming to get me! I could have lived
fine a lot longer, psychologically, physically, but there's a lot of fun
and good business to be done on Earth. It's time to go back, I think.
I'll hand the ball over the Andy. He's very capable and should enjoy
this."
   Astronaut Andrew Thomas will replace Wolf as a Mir-24 crew member
early Sunday, becoming the seventh and final NASA astronaut to serve a
long-duration stay aboard the Russian station. Earlier in the day,
astronaut Chris Hadfield in Houston asked Thomas about his impressions
of Mir as the astronaut looked at his new home through Endeavour's
overhead windows.
   "What's it look like?" Hadfield asked.
   "Home sweet home," Thomas replied. "It's an impressive sight,
actually, it's just amazing. It's been described as a big mosquito or a
dragonfly and that's right, it's got all kinds of wings on it. It's an
incredible sight."
   For his part, Wolf seemed a bit choked up as Endeavour arrived,
saying at one point "I don't know where home is, the United States,
Russia or space?"
   Following the hatch opening, the combined crews gathered in the Mir
core module for a traditional gift exchange and welcoming ceremony in
front of U.S. and Russian flags. Wolf could barely contain himself,
laughing and hugging his U.S. and Russian crewmates, while Thomas
appeared a bit more reserved. Not surprising, perhaps, given the
prospect of four months on board the Russian station.
   "Welcome to our space station Mir," Solovyev said in surprisingly
good English. "We're really glad to see you again."
   "Thank you, Anatoly," Wilcutt replied. "It is our honor to be here on
space station Mir and we thank you for your welcome. We look forward to
picking up our friend, Dave, and bringing him back home. Of course,
we'll be sad for leaving our friend Andy but we know another crew will
be here shortly to pick him up. In the meantime, we know he'll be in
good hands."
   The shuttle crew then presented their Mir-24 counterparts with fresh
oranges, chocolate space shuttles, new notebooks, ink pens and a set of
Swiss Army knives with shuttle emblems on the side.
   "Life's been a little confusing for a year and a half now. I'm not
sure whether I live in Russia, space or America but I know it's going to
be America next," Wolf said. "Thanks for coming. And Andy, I look
forward to helping you get adjusted and I think you're in for a
wonderful experience, one of the best of your whole life."
   "Thanks, David, Anatoly," Thomas said. "I've only been in here a few
minutes, I can see I have an awful lot to learn, though, despite all the
training. It's going to be a fascinating time, no doubt about that. So
thank you both."
   "Anatoly will help you learn!" Wolf said, prompting a wave of
laughter.
   The joint crews then signed off to begin safety briefings and to get
on with the work of transferring supplies and equipment to and from Mir.

   4:00 p.m. Update: Shuttle docks with Mir station

   Streaking through space at five miles per second, the shuttle
Endeavour and the Russian Mir space station gently docked today, kicking
off a flurry of activity to transfer equipment and supplies to the aging
outpost and to replace astronaut David Wolf with a final U.S. crew
member.
   With commander Terry Wilcutt at the controls, Endeavour docked with
Mir at 3:14:31 p.m. as the two spacecraft sailed 240 miles above
southern Russia in orbital darkness.
   "It looks like a good capture," Wilcutt radioed a few seconds later
as the shuttle's Russian-built docking system latched onto Mir.
   "Congratulations, Endeavour," replied astronaut Chris Hadfield from
Houston.
   For astronaut David Wolf, launched to Mir last September aboard the
shuttle Atlantis, Endeavour's arrival marked an emotional moment after
four months in space.
   "This whole event is touching me a little more than I predicted," he
radioed the shuttle, obviously happy to see his ride home showing up
right on time.
   "Well, we're glad to be here," astronaut Bonnie Dunbar replied from
Endeavour.
   "You know we barely felt your docking," Wolf said a few minutes
later. "It was extremely smooth. Much less impact than a Progress. ... I
guess you could call this a midnight rendezvous."
   "How'd it look at night?"
   "It was really something at night with the cities below," Wolf said.
   Wolf will be replaced aboard Mir Sunday morning by astronaut Andrew
Thomas, the seventh and final U.S. astronaut scheduled for a
long-duration stay aboard the Russian space station. In the meantime,
the combined crews plan to spend the rest of today opening hatches
between the two vehicles, holding a brief welcoming ceremony and
beginning work to transfer more than two tons of equipment and supplies
to Mir.

   12:53 p.m. Update: Shuttle Endeavour begins final rendezvous

   The terminal phase of the shuttle Endeavour's rendezvous with the Mir
space station began at 12:51 p.m. with a critical firing of the
orbiter's maneuvering jets. The burn went smoothly and the shuttle
remains on track for docking at 3:14 p.m.

   9:00 a.m. Update: Shuttle crew set for Mir rendezvous

   Heading for an afternoon docking with the Mir space station, the
Endeavour astronauts were awakened this morning at 8:48 a.m. by a
recording of John Denver's "Calypso" beamed up from mission control in
Houston.
   Endeavour is scheduled to dock with Mir at 3:14:15 p.m. after a
two-day orbital chase. This is the eighth of nine planned shuttle-Mir
dockings making up what is known as Phase One of the international space
station program. The goal is to pick up U.S. astronaut David Wolf after
four months aboard Mir; drop of Andrew Thomas in his place; and to
deliver several thousand pounds of fresh water, critical supplies and
repair equipment. Thomas will return to Earth in June aboard the shuttle
Discovery to conclude the Phase One program.
   Today's rendezvous timeline formally begins at 9:48 a.m., but final
approach will not begin until a critical rocket firing called the TI
burn at 12:51:21 p.m. That firing, and subsequent correction burns, will
put Endeavour 600 feet directly below Mir at 2:21 p.m. on what is known
as the positive "r bar," an imaginary line running from Mir to the
center of the Earth. The shuttle then will slowly move up the r bar,
using the planet's gravity and orbital mechanics to provide natural
braking without having to fire upward-pointing thrusters that might
damage Mir's fragile solar arrays. Here are the latest rendezvous
timeline numbers from Houston:

   TIME................EVENT

   12:51:21 p.m........TI burn; begin final rendezvous sequence
   01:19:15 p.m........Mir maneuvers to docking attitude
   01:50:15 p.m........Mir in attitude
   01:59:30 p.m........Sunrise
   02:21:15 p.m........Endeavour on +r bar 600 feet below Mir
   02:42:15 p.m........Start approach to 170 feet
   02:44:15 p.m........Stationkeeping at 170 feet below Mir
   02:48:55 p.m........Endeavour is 100 feet from Mir
   02:57:40 p.m........Sunset
   03:03:25 p.m........Stationkeeping at 30 feet
   03:08:25 p.m........Begin final approach
   03:12:15 p.m........Mir docking window opens
   03:14:15 p.m........Endeavour docks with Mir
   03:31:15 p.m........Docking window closes
   03:31:58 p.m........Sunrise

   "I'll be doing the final bit of flying, but I'd like to give credit
to my entire crew," commander Terry Wilcutt said before launch. "We all
have roles and responsibilities during the rendezvous and I'm counting
on each of them to do their part of it.
   "Starting with the lift-off, we'll do a series of burns that will
bring us closer and closer to the Mir, as we chase it more or less
around the planet until we are close enough to start the final maneuvers
to rendezvous. And once we get within a couple of thousand feet, after
we've done these series of burns, I'll take over manual flying, and I'll
have [pilot Joe Edwards] up front in the commander's seat. I'll actually
be flying out of a rear window of the orbiter, looking out the overhead
window. That way he can back me up and monitor our burns.
   "And we will slow the closing rate with Mir until we get close enough
to actually dock," Wilcutt said. "It's been described by some people as
a difficult task. I really don't think it's that difficult, but it is
very, very delicate. When you're bringing together two vehicles in space
that weigh as much as the shuttle and Mir, you want to make sure that
you tap each other as lightly as possible. So our final closing velocity
will be about an inch a second, and that's about as much as we want to
tap the Mir with the shuttle. But that should be enough to get the
docking modules to mate up. And then we'll open the hatches and start
transferring stuff.
   The "stuff" referred to by Wilcutt is several thousand pounds of
supplies, repair equipment and other material bound for Mir. Here's the
breakdown:

   MATERIAL.............TO MIR........FROM MIR
   
   Water................1,400.........N/A
   U.S. Science.........930.6.........1,680.2
   Dara/CNES............N/A...........N/A
   Russian Logistics....3,247.2.......678.8
   Miscellaneous........257.4.........470.1
   
   TOTAL................4,435.2.......2,829.1

   If all goes well, the hatches between Mir and Endeavour should be
opened by 4:53 p.m., or a bit earlier depending on how things go.
Transfer operations will begin after a welcoming ceremony and safety
briefings for both crews. Thomas will not officially replace Wolf until
Sunday morning, after his custom Soyuz seatliner and entry suit are
transferred to Mir. From that point forward, Thomas could return to
Earth aboard Mir's Soyuz entry vehicle in an emergency.

===================================================================

Astronauts work minor glitches, close in on Mir (01/23/98)

   5:30 p.m.
   With Endeavour slowly but surely closing in on the Mir space station,
the astronauts and ground controllers are working through a handful of
minor technical problems while gearing up for rendezvous and docking
Saturday. Lee Briscoe, mission operations representative at the Johnson
Space Center, said none of the problems poses any threat to Endeavour's
mission.
   "The crew is getting down to business and we're headed toward our Mir
rendezvous," he said. "We're looking forward to taking Andy Thomas up,
bringing Dave Wolf back and getting our [logistics] exchanges done."
   As mentioned earlier, the crew has had problems with the switch used
to operate one of Endeavour's five flight computers. In addition, one of
the shuttle's antenna selection systems is not working properly and the
hard drive on a risk mitigation experiment appears to be malfunctioning.
   Briscoe said the shuttle can fly just fine with just one operational
antenna electronics assembly and that troubleshooting would continue on
the one that is not working properly. As for the computer switch
problem, he said the crew "didn't feel a detent in the run-standby-halt
switch that works that machine."
   "The folks looked at it a little bit and it looked like the machine
was OK in run," Briscoe said. "It would go directly to halt, though, and
you had to tease the switch if you wanted to get it into the standby
position."
   The flight plan called for the computer to be shut down after
reaching orbit and to be powered up later for the Mir rendezvous.
   "They weren't sure they actually got it into standby," Briscoe said.
"You'd like to get it into standby because it shuts itself down in a
nice, graceful manner and puts everything to bed in the proper manner so
when you bring it back up everything's OK. We think that may not have
happened last night when we brought that computer down. They're going to
be doing some more troubleshooting on that machine this afternoon. We'll
bring it back up, reload the machine and if it comes up to run and
everything's OK, we'll probably leave it up in run at least for a number
of days, perhaps through the docked portion of the mission and the
flyaround."
   He said the computer is not considered a "failed" computer, "you just
have to get it in the right condition."

   12:00 p.m. Update
   The Endeavour astronauts were awakened to begin their first full day
in space at 10:48 a.m. As of 7 a.m., the shuttle was about 2,300 miles
behind the Mir space station and catching up by about 287 miles per
orbit. Docking is scheduled for 3:12 p.m. Saturday. Commander Terry
Wilcutt and pilot Joe Edwards plan to fire Endeavour's maneuvering jets
today to fine-tune the shuttle's approach and a centerline camera will
be installed in the orbiter's docking module that will provide critical
views of Mir during final approach. The astronauts also will check out
the rendezvous tools they plan to use Saturday.
   Shortly after reaching orbit Thursday night, one of the shuttle's
five general purpose computers, or GPCs, exhibited apparent problems
with a switch used to turn the computer off in stages, going from "run"
to "standby" to "halt." Last night, the computer went from run directly
to halt without first going into standby mode. The computer currently is
shut down, but flight controllers plan to bring it back up later for
normal operations. Will advise.
   The astronauts plan to discuss this latest Mir docking mission with
two radio programs this evening starting at 8:03 p.m. Quotes and details
will be posted here as soon as possible thereafter.

===================================================================

Shuttle Endeavour rockets into orbit (01/22/98)

   The shuttle Endeavour vaulted away from its oceanside launching pad
tonight after a smooth countdown and rocketed up the East Coast into
orbit to deliver fresh supplies, repair gear and a final U.S. crew
member to the Russian Mir space station.
   With its three main engines roaring at full throttle, Endeavour's
twin solid-fuel boosters ignited with a rush of white-hot flame at
9:48:15 p.m. - right on time - instantly pushing the orbiter up into the
night sky.
   Putting on a spectacular display, the light from Endeavour's powerful
boosters lighted up the sky for dozens of miles around as the shuttle
majestically climbed skyward and wheeled about to line up on the proper
trajectory. About two minutes after liftoff, the boosters were
jettisoned, their fuel exhausted, and Endeavour continued toward orbit
on the power of its three new Block 2A main engines, upgraded to improve
reliability and performance. The brilliant white light from the
Rocketdyne engines finally disappeared from view a little more than five
minutes after liftoff and three minutes later, Endeavour slipped into
its planned preliminary orbit.
   The only problem in the initial hours of Endeavour's flight was an
apparent glitch with general purpose computer No. 3, one of five flight
computers on board the shuttle. But engineers in Houston said they
believed the problem involved a faulty switch and not the computer
itself. Additional troubleshooting was expected to make sure.
   At the moment of Endeavour's liftoff, the aging space station was
about 3,892 miles ahead of the shuttle approaching the west coast of
Ireland. The plane of Mir's orbit is tilted 51.6 degrees to the equator,
an orbit that requires most of the shuttle's fuel and power to reach. To
catch up with Mir, Endeavour had to take off within about 10 minutes of
the time when Earth's rotation carried the launch pad directly into the
plane of Mir's orbit. By launching directly into that orbit, and flying
at a slightly lower altitude, Endeavour will slowly catch up with Mir,
setting up a docking at 3:12 p.m. Saturday if all goes well.
   On board Endeavour are commander Terry Wilcutt, pilot Joe Edwards,
flight engineer Michael Anderson, payload commander Bonnie Dunbar, James
Reilly, Russian air force Lt. Col. Salizhan Sharipov and Andrew Thomas.
Thomas is making his second flight, Wilcutt his third and Dunbar her
fifth, a feat achieved by only one other woman in the history of space
flight: Shannon Lucid.
   Awaiting the Endeavour crew's arrival aboard Mir are Mir-24 commander
Anatoly Solovyev, flight engineer Pavel Vinogradov and U.S. astronaut
David Wolf, who is wrapping up a four-month stay aboard the station.
   "We begin '98 by sending out last astronaut for his stay on Mir,
we're going to howl for the Wolfman," orbiter test conductor Roberta
Wyrick radioed the shuttle just before liftoff.
   Launched to Mir in September aboard the Atlantis, Wolf will be
replaced by Thomas, the seventh and final U.S. long-duration Mir crew
member. Thomas is scheduled to return to Earth aboard the shuttle
Discovery in June and at that point, American astronauts will have
logged a cumulative 2.7 years in space since joint flights began in
1995.
   "You read sometimes about people getting to do amazing things and I
still have to pinch myself a bit to believe I'm going to get this
extraordinary adventure, an adventure, I think, that is probably quite
unique and one of the most unique things that you could possibly do in
the latter part of the 20th Century," Thomas said. "And I feel very
privileged that I'm going to be undertaking this great adventure and
that I'll be essentually the last crew person from the U.S. closing out
this Mir-shuttle program. It's really a great honor."
   As for past problems with Mir's balky computer system and other
components, Thomas said he has no major concerns.
   "I spent a year in Russia studying the systems they use on the space
station Mir," he said. "And as an engineer, I can say these systems are
well designed, they're robust, very strong, as evidenced by the fact
that Mir continues to fly after 12 years and I have a lot of confidence
in them. I know there will be times inevitably when the flight will be
uncomfortable perhaps, but I don't feel the safety is an issue for me
flying on this vehicle."
   Along with delivering Thomas and picking up Wolf, Endeavour's crew
plans to drop off some 1,400 pounds of fresh water; 931 pounds of U.S.
science equipment; 3,247 pounds of Russian supplies and equipment -
including a new air conditioner, compressor and spare computer hardware
- and 257 pounds of miscellaneous items. For the trip home, Endeavour
will carry nearly 3,000 pounds of experiment samples and equipment no
longer needed on Mir.
   This is the eighth of nine planned shuttle flights to Mir. The goal
of the joint missions, known as Phase One of the international space
station program, is to iron out the command and control procedures that
will be needed to jointly build and operate the much larger space
station. At the same time, the Russians are able to use the shuttle to
deliver critical supplies and NASA is getting experience with
long-duration spaceflight.
   "For myself and my crew members, I think it's a great way to start
the new year," Wilcutt said. "We represent kind of a transition. There's
one flight after us in Phase One, that'll mark the end of that, but we
are more or less the beginning of the end of Phase One ... and we start
what everyone has been looking forward to, the building of the
International Space Station."
   Program managers from both sides said the program has been
invaluable.
   "Looking back at the last five years, I think with horror that if we
started the program of international space station without these five
years of preparation, I don't think we would have been successful," said
Valery Ryumin, Russian director of shuttle-Mir operations.
   Ryumin's NASA counterpart, Frank Culbertson, agreed, saying: "Even
though this is the seventh and last launch of an American to spend four
months on the Mir, I think we are continuing to learn, we are continuing
to see new things and we are continuing to experience things in space
and on the ground that apply to our operations in space that are very
readily going to be transferred to international space station."

7:00 p.m. Update: Shuttle Endeavour set for launch (01/22/98)

   The shuttle Endeavour's crew is strapped in, the hatch is closed and
locked and all systems are "go" for blastoff at 9:48:15 p.m. There are
no technical problems and the weather appears to be cooperating. For
readers interesting in such things, tonight's launch window has been
revised slightly. Here are the latest numbers:

   WINDOW OPENS...PLANNED LAUNCH..WINDOW CLOSES

   09:43:48 p.m...09:48:15 p.m....09:51.42 p.m. (flight day 3 docking)

   09:51:52 p.m...................09:56:11 p.m. (flight day 4 docking)

6:30 p.m. Update: Shuttle crew straps in for blastoff

   The shuttle Endeavour's six-man one-woman crew began strapping in for
blastoff this evening shortly before 6:30 p.m. There are no technical
problems of any significance at pad 39A and forecasters continue to
predict good weather for this evening's launch attempt.

2:00 p.m. Update: Fueling underway (01/22/98)

   Engineers fixed a leak in a nitrogen purge system at launch pad 39A
and began pumping a half-million gallons of rocket fuel into the shuttle
Endeavour's external tank at 1:50 p.m. Fueling originally was scheduled
to get underway around 12:30 p.m. but it was delayed when leaks were
discovered in two gaseous nitrogen lines used to purge critical systems
during fueling. Only one line is required for fueling and while one
could not be immediately repaired, the other was. Liftoff remains on
schedule for 9:48:16 p.m. and forecasters continue to predict a 70
percent chance of acceptable weather.
   Here is the schedule for the rest of today's countdown:

   TIME.........EVENT

   01:50 p.m....Fueling begins
   04:30 p.m....NASA TV begins
   04:48 p.m....Crew meal/photo op
   04:50 p.m....Fueling complete
   05:58 p.m....The astronauts head for pad 39A
   06:28 p.m....The crew begins boarding Endeavour
   07:43 p.m....The shuttle's hatch is closed
   08:38 p.m....T-20 hold begins (10-minute hold)
   08:48 p.m....The countdown resumes
   08:59 p.m....T-9 hold begins (40-minute hold)
   09:39 p.m....The countdown resumes
   09:48 p.m....Endeavour takes off

1 p.m. Update: Weather improves; fueling delayed by minor snag
(01/22/98)

   With forecasters now predicting sharply improved weather, engineers
at the Kennedy Space Center are gearing up to fuel the shuttle Endeavour
for blastoff to the Mir space station this evening at 9:48:16 p.m.
Fueling originally was scheduled to begin shortly before 12:30 p.m., but
it was held up by work to troubleshoot a suspect pneumatic regulator at
the launch pad. The problem is not considered serious and fueling should
get underway shortly.
   Meanwhile, Air Force meteorologists have revised an initially gloomy
forecast that called for a 60 percent chance of thick, possibly charged
clouds that would force a 24-hour delay. The forecast now calls for a 70
percent chance of good weather tonight, thanks to thunderstorms that
moved farther to the north than had been expected.
   This is the eighth of nine planned shuttle flights to the Mir space
station and the first such mission by the Endeavour. This evening's
launch also marks the debut of NASA's new Block 2A main engines, part of
a $1 billion upgrade program to more than double the reliability of the
compact powerplants. Among other improvements, the new engines feature
more robust high-pressure oxygen pumps built by Pratt & Whitney and a
new, wide-throat combustion chamber provided by engine-builder
Rocketdyne that will lower internal operating pressures and
temperatures. Block 2 engines ultimately will include a Pratt & Whitney
high pressure hydrogen pump. The Block 2A engines, meanwhile, have
undergone an extensive series of test firings but this evening's flight
marks their first use on an actual mission.
   Here's a bit more background from a story written last October for
Space News:

 By WILLIAM HARWOOD
 Space News Correspondent
 CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Upgraded shuttle main engines will be certified
to operate at a slightly higher power setting for all space station
assembly missions, providing enough extra boost to carry an additional
500 pounds of cargo to orbit.
 While some engineers believe the new block two engines could be
operated routinely at even higher throttle settings, NASA managers are
taking a conservative approach.
 "We're out there on the edge and you'd think, 'well, a little closer to
the edge, that's not that big a deal,'" said Chris Singer, an engineer
at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. "But you just don't know how
close you are. So we run our test program, hopefully, to demonstrate
we've got margin against that edge," Singer added. "But we don't like to
walk along it."
 Shuttle engines currently in service are limited to operating at 104
percent power for normal ascents and emergency aborts involving a single
engine failure. For some aborts, power levels of 109 percent are allowed
if crew survival is at stake. But upgraded Block 2A engines, scheduled
to debut in January, will be certified to operate at 104.5 percent power
for normal ascents, allowing shuttles to carry 500 pounds more payload
with just a slight increase in operating pressure and turbopump speed.
 "They're going to use that for all nominal station flights," Singer
said.
 Finally, NASA's Block 2 engine, the end result of a $1 billion upgrade
implemented in the wake of the Challenger disaster, will be able to
operate at up to 106 percent power for normal ascents and aborts. Block
2 engines are scheduled for first flight next fall. Eventually, Singer
said, the Block 2 engines may be certified to operate at 109 percent
power for aborts involving a single engine failure. The results are
dramatic.
 As it now stands, an engine failure in the first 240 seconds or so of
flight would force a crew to attempt a risky return to the Kennedy Space
Center. With engines certified to operate at 109 percent power for
aborts, that window would be reduced by about 30 seconds, allowing a
crew to head for a more benign landing in Spain or Africa instead.
 "It gives you a little more flexibility in getting to a downstream
abort," Singer said.
 But the higher throttle setting would result in more wear and tear on
machinery already operating, as Singer said, "on the edge."
 "We used to talk about 109 percent for nominal missions," he said. "For
the Galileo and Ulysses missions [to Jupiter and the sun], they were
going to be 109 percent missions. After [Challenger], the community
agreed we don't want to push this machine so hard."
 But for Block 2 engines, 106 percent aborts can be flown with little or
no additional maintenance or inspections.
 Space shuttles use two disposable solid-fuel boosters and three liquid
fueled main engines to reach orbit. The hydrogen-burning engines are
built by Boeing's Rocketdyne Division of Canoga Park, Calif. The engines
originally featured lightweight Rocketdyne-built high pressure oxygen
and hydrogen turbopumps. But in the wake of the 1986 Challenger
disaster, NASA implemented a $1 billion program to upgrade the powerful
engines to reduce maintenance and improve reliability.
 The upgrades include heavier and presumably more reliable pumps built
by Pratt & Whitney of West Palm Beach, Fla., a so-called large throat
combustion chamber to reduce operating pressure and a redesigned hot gas
manifold that routes hydrogen and oxygen to the combustion chamber for
burning.
 Work on the Pratt & Whitney hydrogen pump started later than originally
planned, prompting NASA to implement the engine upgrade in phases. The
Block 1 engine, currently in service, features the Pratt & Whitney
oxygen pump, the new hot gas manifold and other improvements implemented
by Rocketdyne. The Block 2A engine adds the large throat combustion
chamber. The Block 2 engine will include all of the previous
improvements along with the Pratt & Whitney-built high pressure hydrogen
pump.
 The Block 2 engines will be certified to operate between 104 percent
and 106 percent power for normal ascents. Two heavyweight space station
missions currently require 106 percent throttle settings. The Block 2
certification program requires two engines to undergo an exhaustive
series of test firings at various throttle settings, including 111
percent power to demonstrate the engine's overall safety margin.
 "Assuming our cerification program comes out right, we'll have 22
starts on each of two engines, with some 11,000 seconds [of run time
each], with power levels ranging from 104 all the way through 111,"
Singer said. "So assuming things come out as we anticipate, we'll be
able to run an abort (and) it'll just be a standard turnaround. That's
the goal."

===================================================================

Culbertson outlines launch options (01/21/98)

   While the odds are good the shuttle Endeavour will get off the ground
by Saturday night (see below for launch details), NASA and the Russian
Space Agency have worked out contingency plans in case worse comes to
worse. To avoid a traffic jam in space, NASA and Russian planners are
trying to juggle Endeavour's flight and the launch of a Soyuz spacecraft
Jan. 29 carrying a new crew to the Russian station: Mir-25 commander
Talgat Musabayev, flight engineer Nikolai Budarin and French researcher
Leopold Eyharts. Eyharts will return to Earth around Feb. 19 with Mir-24
commander Anatoly Solovyev and Pavel Vinogradov.
   Assuming an on-time launch for Endeavour, the Mir-25 crew would dock
on the day the shuttle returned to Earth. No problem. But "if we don't
get off by Saturday, the plan would be to stand down from launching the
shuttle for about a week while they continue their launch preparations
on the Soyuz," said Frank Culbertson, NASA's director of shuttle-Mir
operations.
   "They would launch the Soyuz on the 29th of January and we would
launch the shuttle probably on the evening of the 30th. [The shuttle]
would dock while the six crew members, both Soyuzes, are there. The
issue we worked on this was whether we could have 13 people on board the
combined spacecraft at the same time or not and technically it's
doable," Culbertson said. "Both sides agreed to it and we can accomplish
that safely.
   "The other side of that is how do you conduct the operations and the
agreement is if we had to arrive during that time period, they would
stand down from the French [research] program for four days while we're
docked and we would conduct the transfer operations and get Andy set up
and Dave transferred back. Then ... after the shuttle had left, they
would add back the number of days they gave up on the research program
and bring the Soyuz down three or four days later than originally
planned."

===================================================================

Weather outlook unchanged for Endeavour launch (01/21/98)

   Working through a handful of minor technical problems, engineers are
pressing ahead with the shuttle Endeavour's countdown to launch Thursday
night, keeping an eye on threatening weather that continues to promise a
60 percent chance of clouds that would force a delay. NASA test director
Jeff Spaulding said none of the technical problems posed any threat to
the launch schedule. A suspect computer display in the shuttle's cockpit
may have to be replaced, along with a motor assembly used to remotely
drive a circuit breaker on one of the pumps used to load the shuttle's
external tank with propellant.
   With work proceeding smoothly at pad 39A, Air Force meteorologists
continue to predict a 60 percent chance of thick clouds that would
prevent a takeoff during the shuttle's short launch window. The outlook
remains 60 percent "no go" for Friday and improves to 80 percent "go" on
Saturday.
   During work yesterday to test pyrotechnic devices on the shuttle,
engineers noticed two pilot whales had beached themselves near pad 39A.
Spaulding said the testing was held up long enough to let Sea World
employees move the whales out of the area.
   If all goes well, a protective gantry will be pulled away from
Endeavour around 4 a.m. Thursday and shortly before 9 a.m., personnel
will evacuate the launch pad area for fueling. NASA's mission management
team will meet at 11:30 a.m. to assess the weather and any technical
problems with fueling set to begin at 12:22 p.m. The three-hour process
should be complete by 3:30 p.m. Here are the latest launch times and
windows:

   WINDOW OPENS.....PREFERRED.......WINDOW CLOSES
                    LAUNCH TIME
   Thursday
   09:43:16 p.m.....09:48:16 p.m....09:53:14 p.m.

   Friday
   09:20:41 p.m.....09:25:41 p.m....09:30:40 p.m.

   Saturday
   08:58:08 p.m.....TBD.............09:08:06 p.m.

   Assuming an on-time launch, Endeavour will dock with Mir at 3:12 p.m.
Saturday, undock at 11:52 a.m. on Jan. 29 and land at 5:36 p.m. on Jan.
31. If the launch slips to Friday, docking with Mir would be scheduled
for 3:54 p.m. on Superbowl Sunday. Undocking would occur at 11 a.m. on
Jan. 30 with landing would be on tap at 6:15 p.m. on Feb. 1.


===================================================================


01/20/98 Update: Weather threatens shuttle launch

   Keeping tabs on threatening weather, engineers at the Kennedy Space
Center are pressing ahead with work to ready the shuttle Endeavour for
blastoff Thursday night on a mission to the Russian Mir space station.
Endeavour's 10-minute launch window opens at 9:43:16 p.m. and closes at
9:53:14 p.m., but for technical reasons, flight controllers want to
launch the shuttle at 9:48:16 p.m.
   "Overall, the STS-89 countdown is going rather well and we're on
time," said NASA test director John Guidi.
   Most of today will be spent loading liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen
aboard the shuttle to power the ship's three electicity producing fuel
cells. Overnight, engineers replaced one of Endeavour's three forward
computer screens because of a suspect power supply.
   The launch windows for this mission are rather complicated, defined
by Mir's orbit and the shuttle's ability to reach the space station. As
it turns out, Endeavour must launch within about 10 minutes of the time
when the Kennedy Space Center rotates through the plane of Mir's orbit.
To maximize performance, NASA would prefer to launch in the middle of
that 10-minute window. Here are the latest numbers for all three days:

   WINDOW OPENS.....PREFERRED.......WINDOW CLOSES
                    LAUNCH TIME
   Thursday
   09:43:16 p.m.....09:48:16 p.m....09:53:14 p.m.

   Friday
   09:20:42 p.m.....TBD.............09:30:40 p.m.

   Saturday
   08:58:08 p.m.....TBD.............09:08:06 p.m.

   A launch on Thursday or Friday would result in a Mir docking two days
later. A Saturday launch would result in a linkup three days later. All
these times are subject to slight change based on final radar tracking
of Mir.
   With work at pad 39A going smoothly, forecasters are monitoring the
approach of a frontal system that promises to bring thick clouds over
central Florida by Thursday evening. Ed Priselac, an Air Force weather
officer, said the front will be west of Florida, but it is expected to
push clouds into the launch area. The shuttle is not allowed to fly
through thick clouds because of the possibility of natural or rocket
triggered lightning.
   "Our concerns on Thursday, primarily first would be thunderstorm
anvils," Priselac said. "Secondly, if there's a thunderstorm debris
cloud it has to be at least three hours old, we can't fly through it.
And thirdly, there is a concern for thick layered clouds. If we have
clouds 4,500 feet thick or greater and they lie between the zero and
minus 20-degree Celsius temperature range, we cannot fly through those
as well. And given all that, we do have obvious concerns about getting
off the ground on Thursday and again on Friday."
   Overall, Priselac said, there's a 60 percent chance of a launch delay
Thursday and Friday. The odds improve to 80 percent "go" by Saturday
night. NASA normally only makes two launch tries in a row before
standing down a day to give the launch team a break. But there is
pressure on the agency to get Endeavour off the ground as soon as
possible. If the flight is delayed past Saturday, another attempt likely
could not be made until well into February because of a U.S. launch and
other Russian flights to Mir.
   "If just the [U.S.] was the consideration, we could potentially try
and launch again on the 30th," Guidi said. "But right now, there are
some other activities at the program level as far as Soyuz lifespan and
other activities on orbit that the Russian space program would want to
weigh in on and that decision would be made after Saturday if it has to
be made at all."
   If the forecast holds up, NASA managers likely would attempt three
launch tries in a row to get Endeavour off the ground.
   And finally, as reported over the weekend, two of Endeavour's three
hydraulic systems have small leaks. Engineers calculate that over a full
10-day mission, system No. 1 would leak about 140 cubic centimeters of
hydraulic fluid and system No. 3 would leak about 73 cubic centimeters.
   "Our allowable is about 144," said Guidi. "So we're below that and in
fact, the reservoirs on the auxilliary power units and hydraulic systems
can withstand well over 900 cubic centimeters of leakage each. So we're
well within allowable and well within a long-standing requirement."

===================================================================

Shuttle mission preview (01/20/98)

   Carrying an international crew of seven, the shuttle Endeavour is set
for blastoff to the Mir space station to pick up U.S. astronaut David
Wolf and to drop off Andrew Thomas, the seventh and final American
astronaut scheduled for a long-duration stay aboard the Russian outpost.
Endeavour's crew also plans to deliver some 1,400 pounds of fresh water,
1,000 pounds of U.S. science gear and some 3,250 pounds of Russian
logistics. They will bring back some 2,800 pounds of experiment samples
and Russian equipment.
   "This is the eighth docking mission, the ninth flight of a shuttle to
the Mir and of course we are proceeding into two continuous years of
U.S. presence on board the Mir beginning with Shannon Lucid in March of
1996," said Frank Culbertson, NASA director of shuttle-Mir operations.
   "We are carrying extensive logistics again to the Mir as well as
returning a great deal of hardware and science data. In fact, we're
returning as much as we can on this mission because the following
mission will only be a single Spacehab and we'll not be able to bring as
much down as we would otherwise."

   MATERIAL.............UP (lbs)......DOWN (lbs)
   
   Water................1,400.........N/A
   U.S. Science.........930.6.........1,680.2
   Dara/CNES............N/A...........N/A
   Russian Logistics....3,247.2.......678.8
   Miscellaneous........257.4.........470.1
   
   TOTAL................4,435.2.......2,829.1

   The flight also is the first for NASA's new Block 2A main engines.
The upgraded engines include a Pratt & Whitney-built high pressure
oxygen pump, a large throat combustion chamber, a two-duct powerhead and
a variety of other changes intended to improve safety and reliability. A
new Pratt & Whitney hydrogen pump will be added later as part of a $1
billion engine upgrade program.
   Endeavour's flight is the eighth of nine planned shuttle-Mir linkups
making up what is known as Phase One of the international space station
project. The idea was to use Mir as a training ground to perfect the
joint U.S.-Russian command and control procedures that will be needed
during construction and operation of the more ambitious international
station.
   For their part, the shuttle would serve the Russians by acting as a
supply vehicle, carrying more equipment on a single flight than would be
possible with two or more Progress vehicles. At the same time, the U.S.
got a chance to put American astronauts on board Mir to gain experience
with long-duration spaceflight. When all is said and done, seven U.S.
astronauts will have logged some 740 days in space.
   "It's hard to calculate everything we've learned from Phase One,"
said Endeavour commander Terry Wilcutt. "You know, we've tested
equipment, [run] risk mitigation experiments. We have checked much of
the equipment that we intend to fly on the international space station
on the Mir, and we have found some problems with some of it, and we have
fixed it. So it's saved us all kinds of problems and time and money by
being able to test these things on Mir."
   Valery Ryumin, Culbertson's counterpart in Russia, agreed, saying the
two nations would not have been able to proceed with the international
space station without first working through Phase One.
   "Looking back at the last five years, I think with horror that if we
started the program of international space station without these five
years of preparation, I don't think we would have been successful," he
said through an interpreter. "And the thing we learned from this program
is there are different approaches on each side on how to solve the same
problems. However, at this point we understand the philosophy of each
side and we can predict what approach the other side would take solving
the problem."
   "To tell you the truth," he said, "I feel very sorry that with the
next shuttle docking mission we will end our program. I don't want to
leave it at the ninth. So maybe we need to think about how we can extend
this phase to include another, tenth, flight. I just want to say this is
a very good program and I am very sorry to see it go."
   Wilcutt's crew members are Australian-born Thomas, pilot Joseph
Edwards, payload commander Bonnie Dunbar, flight engineer Michael
Anderson, James Reilly and Russian Air Force Lt. Col. Shakirovich
Sharipov and Thomas. Wilcutt is making his third space flight, his first
as commander, while Dunbar is making her fifth. Thomas flew once before
but the rest of the crew members are space rookies.
   "For myself and my crew members, I think it's a great way to start
the new year," Wilcutt said in a NASA interview. "We do represent kind
of a transition. There's one flight after us in Phase One, that'll mark
the end of that, but we are more or less the beginning of the end of
Phase One, the initial cooperation with the Russians in space, and then
we start what everyone has been looking forward to, the building of the
International Space Station."
   Wolf was launched to Mir on Sept. 25, replacing astronaut Michael
Foale. Assuming an on-time landing Jan. 31, Wolf will have logged some
129 days in space. Thomas is scheduled to spend 138 days in orbit before
returning to Earth on June 7.
   At the time of Wolf's launch, the Russian Space Agency was still
recovering from a series of malfunctions that made headlines in the west
throughout 1997, most of them resulting from the June 25 collision of a
Progress resupply vehicle with the station's Spektr research module. The
module was punctured and one of its four solar arrays was wrecked.
Spektr remains closed off, but the crew has been able to restore power
from its three operational arrays and to repair most of the other
malfunctions.
   The only major problems at present involve a broken air conditioning
system and trouble with Mir's motion control system.
   "The air conditioner is still not repaired," Culbertson said.
"Condensate recovery is being accomplished with the Soyuz, which gives
them about one half or less than normal condensate recovery. So we are
carrying additional components on this next mission, a refrigeration
unit for the air conditioner as well as a spare compressor that will
allow them to complete repairs and return the condensate recovery and
air conditioning systems to normal operations."
   Along with ferrying needed equipment and consummables to Mir,
Endeavour's crew also plans to carry out a series of on-board
experiments in Earth sciences, fundamental biology, medicine, advanced
technology development, microgravity research and risk mitigation.
   First, however, the shuttle has to get there. As usual, Endeavour
will approach the station from directly below, using Earth's gravity and
orbital mechanics to provide a sort of natural brake, minimizing the
need to fire upward-pointing jets that could damage the station's solar
arrays or optical sensors.
   "Starting with the liftoff we'll do a series of burns that will bring
us closer and closer to the Mir, as we chase it more or less, around the
planet until we are close enough to start the final maneuvers to
rendezvous," Wilcutt said. "And once we get within a couple of thousand
feet, after we've done these series of burns, I'll take over manual
flying and I'll have Joe up front in the commander's seat. I'll actually
be flying out of a rear window of the orbiter, looking out the overhead
window. That way he can back me up and monitor our burns.
   "And we will slow the closing rate with Mir until we get close enough
to actually dock," he said. "It's been described by some people as a
difficult task. I really don't think it's that difficult, but it is
very, very delicate. When you're bringing together two vehicles in space
that weigh as much as the shuttle and Mir, you want to make sure that
you tap each other as lightly as possible. So our final closing velocity
will be about an inch a second, and that's about as much as we want to
tap the Mir with the shuttle. But that should be enough to get the
docking modules to mate up. And then we'll open the hatches and start
transferring stuff."
   Thomas will officially join the crew of Mir-25 commander Anatoly
Solovyev and flight engineer Pavel Vinogradov the morning after
Endeavour docks. At that point, he will begin sleeping aboard Mir and
Wolf will join Endeavour's crew. Arriving at the Kennedy Space Center
for launch, Thomas said he had no concerns about Mir's safety.
   "I spent a year in Russia studying the systems they use on the space
station Mir," he said. "And as an engineer, I can say these systems are
well designed, they're robust, very strong, as evidenced by the fact
that Mir continues to fly after 12 years and I have a lot of confidence
in them. I know there will be times inevitably when the flight will be
uncomfortable perhaps, but I don't feel the safety is an issue for me
flying on this vehicle."

===================================================================

Crew arrives for start of countdown (01/19/98)

   The Endeavour astronauts flew to the Kennedy Space Center today for
the start of their countdown to blastoff Thursday night on NASA's eighth
shuttle-Mir docking mission. With the countdown scheduled to begin at 7
p.m. this evening, liftoff is set for 9:48:16 p.m. Thursday. But
forecasters are predicting a 60 percent chance of thick clouds and
thunderstorm anvils during the shuttle's 10-minute launch window that
could force a 24-hour delay. The forecast for Friday and Saturday is 60
percent "go."
   Endeavour's six-man one-woman crew appeared up beat and optimistic
while chatting with reporters after arriving in Florida.
   "We had a great flight down. It's definitely our pleasure to be
here," said commander Terry Wilcutt. "It's nice to have a piece of the
last long-duration crew member swap out."
   The goal of Endeavour's flight is to deliver astronaut Andrew Thomas
to Mir to replace David Wolf, who was launched to the Russian station
aboard the shuttle Atlantis in September. While docked, the combined
crews will transfer several thousand pounds of equipment, supplies and
fresh water to Mir and move other equipment and experiment samples from
the station to Endeavour for return to Earth.
   "In addition to all the science we're transferring to Mir, we also
have about 23 other science and engineering investigations on board the
shuttle," said payload commander Bonnie Dunbar, making her fifth space
flight and her second visit to Mir. "So we have a very challenging and
interesting flight."
   This is the eighth of nine planned shuttle-Mir docking flights
serving as a training ground for joint operations aboard the
international space station. Thomas is the seventh and final U.S.
astronaut scheduled for a long-duration stay aboard Mir. He will be
returned to Earth in June.
   "How do you like my space station haircut?" Thomas asked reporters
today, taking off his baseball cap and displaying a fresh crew cut. "Do
you think it's going to last four months? Probably not.
   "You read sometimes about people getting to do amazing things and I
still have to pinch myself a bit to believe I'm going to get this
extraordinary adventure, an adventure, I think, that is probably quite
unique and one of the most unique things that you could possibly do in
the latter part of the 20th Century. And I feel very privileged that I'm
going to be undertaking this great adventure and that I'll be
essentually the last crew person from the U.S. closing out this
Mir-shuttle program. It's really a great honor."
   Asked if he had any concerns about flight safety aboard Mir, Thomas
said he is convinced the aging station is sound.
    "I spent a year in Russia studying the systems they use on the space
station Mir," he said. "And as an engineer, I can say these systems are
well designed, they're robust, very strong, as evidenced by the fact
that Mir continues to fly after 12 years and I have a lot of confidence
in them. I know there will be times inevitably when the flight will be
uncomfortable perhaps, but I don't feel the safety is an issue for me
flying on this vehicle."

===================================================================

Hydraulic leaks monitored (01/17/98)

   Shuttle engineers met late today to discuss what - if anything - to
do about two small leaks in two of the shuttle Endeavour's three
hydraulic systems. The redundant hydraulic systems provide the power to
move the shuttle's wing flaps, main engine nozzles, rudder, speed brake
and landing gear brakes. It does not appear the leaks can be fixed at
the launch pad, but the leak rate is so low engineers decided to press
ahead with work to ready Endeavour for blastoff Jan. 22 to the Mir space
station.
   But the issue will be revisited at the final management meeting the
day before liftoff. One suspects Endeavour will be cleared to fly "as
is," but one never knows about such things. Will advise.

===================================================================

Shuttle crew practices emergency procedures (01/10/98)

   The shuttle Endeavour's international crew reviewed emergency
procedures today at pad 39A before a dress-rehearsal countdown Saturday
to clear the way for blastoff Jan. 22 on a flight to the Russian Mir
space station. Endeavour is scheduled to take off on the 89th shuttle
mission - NASA's eighth flight to the Russian space station - at 9:48
p.m. on Jan. 22, setting up a docking at 3:12 p.m. on Jan. 24. The
launch window is just five minutes long.
   The primary goals of the year's first shuttle flight are to pick up
U.S. astronaut David Wolf after four months aboard Mir; to drop off
astronaut Andrew Thomas in his place; and to deliver several thousand
pounds of supplies, fresh water, repair equipment, food and other
consumables to the Russian outpost. Endeavour also will bring down a ton
or more of material, including Russian equipment and experiment samples
from ongoing U.S. research projects.
   Thomas will officially replace Wolf as a Mir crew member the morning
of Jan. 25 - Superbowl Sunday - after Thomas's custom Soyuz seat liner
is transferred from Endeavour and installed in the Russian re-entry
vehicle. Thoms will return to Earth in June aboard a shuttle, but he
must be able to use the Soyuz in case of an emergency.
   If all goes well, Endeavour will undock from Mir at 11:52 a.m. Jan.
29 and land at the Kennedy Space Center around 5:36 p.m. on Jan. 31. All
of these times are expected to change slightly based on final radar
tracking of Mir and Endeavour's actual launch time.
   This is the eighth of nine planned shuttle-Mir docking flights and
Thomas is the seventh and final U.S. astronaut scheduled for a
long-duration stay. When Endeavour lands, Wolf will have logged 127.8
days in orbit. Thomas is scheduled to return to Earth June 7, giving him
135.7 days in space. At that point, U.S. astronauts will have logged
972.1 days in space as part of the shuttle-Mir program, including time
aboard the space shuttle going to and coming back from the station.
   NASA originally planned for Wolf to be the final Mir visitor. But he
was moved up one flight last summer when astronaut Wendy Lawrence was
bumped from a planned Mir visit because she is too short to wear a
Russian spacesuit. Thomas, who was in training as Wolf's backup, never
expected to actually visit Mir. He told reporters today it took a bit of
adjusting on his part to get used to being the prime crew member.
   "That was a big transition," he said. "I'm going through another
transition right now because I trained in Russia and now that I'm down
in Florida for the first time in some 14 or 15 months it's giving this
whole thing a degree of reality, which it hadn't had before. And that's
a fascinating experience, I'm really enjoying it."
   He said his family initially was nervous about the prospect of a
long-duration stay aboard the aging space station.
   "There was some concern from family in friends, parents particularly,
concerning riding on Mir," he said. "But I don't think they have those
concerns now. We've had a lot of talks about it. I personally feel
comfortable with it.
   "I think riding on Mir is not so much an issue of safety concerns,
but I do think there will be legitimate comfort concerns. I think some
of the basic creature comforts from time to time are not going to be
there, like the temperature will be high or the humidity will be high or
it might be noisy. I think those are the real issues I'll be dealing
with during this four month flight."
   Thomas said he did not feel any additional pressure to accomplish his
objectives as the final American visitor to Mir.
   "I don't know if I feel any additional responsibility more than any
other crew person who would fly. Obviously, I'm very keen to have this
be a successful mission and a successful conclusion to the NASA-Mir
program."
   Here are the latest times for key mission events:

   TIME/DATE......MET........EVENT

   01/22
   09:48:16 p.m...00/00:00...Launch (launch window: five minutes)

   01/24
   12:49 p.m......01/15:01...Final rendezvous rocket firing (TI burn)
   03:12 p.m......01/17:24...Endeavour docks with Mir station

   01/25 (Superbowl Sunday)
   009:48 a.m.....02/12:00...David Wolf replaced by Andrew Thomas

   01/29
   11:52 a.m......06/14:04...The shuttle undocks from Mir
   12:57 p.m......06/15:09...Endeavour moves away from the station

   01/31
   04:32 p.m......08/18:44...Deorbit ignition on orbit 138
   05:36 p.m......08/19:48...Landing at the Kennedy Space Center

===================================================================

New launch time (01/05/98)

   Launch of the shuttle Endeavour to the Mir space station is now
targeted for 9:48:16 p.m. on Jan. 22. This is the latest launch time
based on radar tracking of Mir. Assuming an on-time liftoff, Endeavour
will dock with Mir around 2:38 p.m. on Jan. 24 and undock around 11:20
a.m. on Jan. 29. Landing at the Kennedy Space Center is targeted for
5:56 p.m. on Jan. 31. These times are approximate. This page will be
updated throughout when the new target times are available.

===================================================================

Engineers mull additional two-day launch delay (12/17/97)

   The shuttle Endeavour's launch to the Russian Mir space station,
currently scheduled for 10:36:15 p.m. on Jan. 20, faces an additional
two-day delay, NASA officials say. There are several issues involved,
including work to prevent insulation from flaking off the intertank area
of Endeavour's external fuel tank and a desire by management to give the
shuttle processing team time off over the Christmas break.
   "It's a combination of ET work and the holidays," said a NASA
official. "It's just too tight to make (the 20th)."
   A meeting is scheduled Thursday to discuss the matter in more detail.
Should launch be delayed two more days, liftoff would be scheduled for
9:48:01 p.m. on Jan. 22. Will Advise.

===================================================================

Initial flight information (12/15/97)

   Engineers at the Kennedy Space Center are readying the shuttle
Atlantis for blastoff at 10:36:15 p.m. Jan. 20 on a flight to the
Russian Mir space station. This will be the eighth of nine planned
shuttle-Mir docking missions making up Phase One of the international
space station project. The primary goals of Endeavour's mission are to
pick up U.S. astronaut David Wolf; drop off astronaut Andrew Thomas in
his place; and to deliver needed supplies and equipment to the Russian
station.
   A terminal countdown demonstration test to practice countdown
procedures is scheduled for Jan. 7-9 at the Kennedy Space Center. A
formal flight readiness review to set the official launch date is
planned for Jan. 6 or 7. Pre-flight news briefings from the Johnson
Space Center are scheduled for Jan. 13.
   For readers interested in such trivia, here are the latest launch
window estimates based on Mir's projected orbit and other variables. Be
advised these times will change slightly between now and launch:

   DATE....WINDOW OPENS...WINDOW CLOSES

   01/20...10:36:15 p.m...10:41:13 p.m. (FD-3 rendezvous, dock on 01/22)
   01/21...10:13:40 p.m...10:18:38 p.m. (FD-4 rendezvous, dock on 01/24)
   01/22...09:48:01 p.m...09:53:00 p.m. (FD-3 rendezvous, dock on 01/24)
   01/23...09:25:26 p.m...09:30:24 p.m. (FD-3 rendezvous, dock on 01/26)

   At the controls for launch will be commander Terrence Wilcutt and
pilot Joseph Edwards. Their crewmates going up are Thomas, Bonnie
Dunbar, making her fifth space flight, James Reilly, Michael Anderson,
and Russian cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov, all three making their first
flight. Assuming an on-time liftoff, docking is scheduled for 3:33 p.m.
Jan. 22 (MET: 1/16:57). Undocking is planned for 7:23 p.m. Jan. 27 (MET:
6/13:37) with landing on tap at 7:23 p.m. on Jan. 30 (MET: 8/20:47).
   At touchdown, Wolf will have logged 126.9 days in space since
blastoff Sept. 25. Thomas plans to spend 138 days in orbit before
returning to Earth on June 7. Thomas is the seventh and final
long-duration astronaut scheduled to visit Mir and his return will mark
the end of the Phase One program and the beginning of Phase Two:
Construction of the international space station. First launch is
targeted for the end of June.
   Endeavour originally was scheduled for launch Jan. 15, but the flight
was delayed five days to give Wolf time to complete NASA experiments and
to help the Russians orchestrate a flurry of activity, including three
spacewalks, the unloading of a Progress supply ship and the arrival of
the Mir-25 crew.
   Mir-24 commander Anatoly Solovyev and flight engineer Pavel
Vinogradov plan to venture outside Mir on Dec. 30 to attempt repairs of
a leaky seal on the station's external airlock. They plan another EVA on
Jan. 5 to install handrails on the punctured Spektr module to facilitate
future repair work. Assuming the airlock hatch is repaired, Wolf likely
will be cleared to join Solovyev for a spacewalk Jan. 12 to retrieve
U.S. experiment gear mounted on Mir's hull.
   Mir-25 commander Talgat Musabayev, flight engineer Nikolai Budarin
and French researcher Leopold Eyharts are scheduled to blast off aboard
a Soyuz spacecraft on Jan. 29. Eyharts, Solovyev and Vinogradov will
return to Earth around Feb. 19. Until then, Mir's life support systems
will have to cope with six crew members but engineers say the station is
in good health and no problems are expected.
   A detailed overview of Endeavour's mission will be posted here after
pre-flight briefings at the Johnson Space Center or as conditions
warrant. Other mission-specific information will be posted here as it
becomes available, including the summary timeline. In the meantime, keep
up with what's going on aboard Mir with Dennis Newkirk's excellent
Russian Aerospace Guide.