STS-89
Report # 08 
Monday, January 26, 1998 - 6 a.m. CST 
 
MISSION CONTROL CENTER STATUS REPORT # 8
STS-89
Monday, January 26, 1998, 6 a.m. CST


  Continued transfer of hardware and supplies to and from the Mir
space station remains the prime order of business today as STS-89
enters its second full day of joint docked operations. The crew was
awakened at 5:48 a.m. CST to the tune."Singer from Down Under" by
performer Slim Dusty in honor of Australia Day and Australian-born
astronaut Andy Thomas.

  Flight controllers labored overnight to delete lower priority items
from the Endeavour crew's workload to make up for lost sleep due to an
attitude control management issue.  Late Sunday, an erroneous sensor
reading showed a leak on Endeavour's reaction control system jet
L5D. It was shortly determined that the sensor showing the leak was
faulty and onboard monitoring of the affected jet could be managed
with a software change.  That change requires ground testing and
approval before it is sent to the shuttle's computers and will be
tested this morning in the Johnson Space Center's Shuttle Avionics
Integration Laboratory (SAIL).  Following the sensor failure, Mission
Control asked Russian controllers to let Mir maintain attitude control
for the joined spacecraft.  Transfer of control was done late Sunday,
but the work consumed some of the crew's scheduled sleep time.

  Not long after the handover of control, however, Russian engineers
monitoring Mir determined that the space station was low on thruster
fuel in 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. The ground awakened
Pilot Joe Edwards about 1:15 a.m. CST.  Edwards and commander Terry
Wilcutt woke the Mir crew and the 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 workload for flight day 5.

  Also on Sunday, astronauts Andy Thomas and David Wolf exchanged
their Soyuz seat liners, equipping Thomas for the start of his
extended stay in space. Thomas had some difficulty with his Sokol
pressure suit during the transition and checkout, noting that it was
too small.  He was able to don Wolf's suit, but found the arms to be
too long.  Engineers in the U.S. and Russia will look at the problem
today in an effort to properly size one of the suits to fit.

  By the end of flight day 4, 47 percent of the supply and equipment
transfers had been completed, totaling 4,107 pounds.

The next STS-89 status report will be issued Monday evening at 6
p.m. Central time.

###

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