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STS-59 Status Report #20
MISSION CONTROL CENTER


Saturday, April 16, 1994, 3 a.m. CDT

The Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C and the X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar
instruments along with the Measurement of Atmospheric Pollution by Satellite
experiment have kept pace with their scheduled observations at selected sites
around the globe.

At about 11:30 p.m. and again at 1:15 a.m. central time, Jay Apt used
Endeavour's Shuttle Amateur Radio to talk with fellow astronauts Norm Thagard
and Bonnie Dunbar and two Russian cosmonauts at the Star City training center
outside Moscow, Russia. At the Star City facility, Thagard is training as the
prime U.S. crew member and Dunbar as a backup for a 1995 joint U.S./Russian
mission aboard the Russian MIR space station.

The Blue Team -- Jay Apt, Rich Clifford and Tom Jones -- reported several
visual observations including fires burning in Africa and a line of
thunderstorms over northeastern Brazil. Payloads scientists asked the crew to
add the Rugen Island, off Germany's northern coastline in the Baltic Sea, to
their list of Earth observations photography.

Among the numerous radar images recorded on the Blue shift were views for
oceanographers over the North Sea and the Labrador Sea; for ecologists over
sites at Chulchaca, Yucatan, Mexico, Duke Forest, North Carolina, and Manaus
Cabaliana, Brazil; and for geologists at Fort Zinder in the Sahara Desert, the
Karakax Valley, China, and Zhamanshin, Russia.

The Blue Team will be on duty until 8:15 a.m. central time when they will hand
over to the Red Team -- Sid Gutierrez, Kevin Chilton and Linda Godwin.

Endeavour continues its flawless performance eight days into this Mission to
Planet Earth.