Return to Home Page
From: starrfie@hydro.la.asu.edu (Sumner Starrfield) Subject: MCC Status Report 20 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 93 22:08:05 MST Mission Control Center STS-61 Status Report #20 Saturday, December 11, 1993, 10:30 a.m. CST While the STS-61 crew had a day off to relax, they will be coming home one orbit earlier than originally planned due to weather trends at KSC. Endeavour currently is scheduled to land at 11:26 p.m. CST Sunday, which is 12:26 a.m. EST Monday. The deorbit burn will be performed at 10:16 p.m. CST Sunday for the early end of mission landing opportunity. The change was made to maximize the chances for two landing opportunities at KSC on Flight Day 11. Weather trends indicate that winds will increase at the nominal landing time of 1:08 a.m. CST Monday, and conditions are expected to worsen later in the morning. Endeavour has enough consumables available to extend the mission at least another day, if necessary and could land at the backup site at Edwards Air Force Base, California if weather condition preclude a Florida landing. To accommodate the earlier landing time, the crew's sleep schedule will be shifted slightly. The crew will wake up just before 5 p.m. CST today as planned, but go to sleep one hour earlier on Sunday around 8 a.m., with Sunday afternoon's wake-up call now coming at about 4 p.m. CST. Otherwise, the astronauts' schedule Sunday will continue much as planned. The crew will hold a news conference around midnight CST, followed by a congratulatory call for Claude Nicollier from the Swiss Minister of Internal Affairs Ruth Dreifuss. A news conference with European journalists will follow. The crew had a relatively relaxing tenth flight day. They investigated water system management techniques for the international space station by dumping waste and supply water simultaneously while a camera on the shuttle's robot arm monitored the progress, after which the arm was tucked away in the payload bay. The crew also repressurized the orbiter to 14.7 pounds-per-square-inch as it is on Earth and spent the rest of their day off enjoying Earth views from space. Ground controllers report that the Hubble Space Telescope is in fine shape and moving away from Endeavour at a rate of about 4 nautical miles per orbit. All systems on Endeavour continue to perform well as the orbiter circles every 96 minutes, approximately 320 miles above Earth.
Return to the Powerful Daisaku Nogami
vsnet-adm@kusastro.kyoto-u.ac.jp
