MISSION CONTROL CENTER
STS-63 Status Report #3

Saturday, February 4, 1995, 8:30 a.m. CST

With each orbit, Discovery edged closer to Monday's rendezvous with the Russian
space station Mir, as the six STS-63 crew members wrap up a busy day of work
with the mission's payloads.

One of the first tasks for the crew during its second day is space was to deploy
the Orbital Debris and Radar Calibration Spheres, or ODERACS, from a canister in
the shuttle's cargo bay.  The three spheres and three wire strands, all of
varying sizes and composition,  were released from Discovery on time at about
10:57 p.m. CST Friday and will be used to fine-tune ground radars and optics
worldwide that track space debris.  The spheres and wires may remain in orbit
for times ranging from as short as 20 days to 280 days.

Mission Specialist and Russian Cosmonaut Vladimir Titov later used the shuttle's
mechanical arm to lift the SPARTAN-204 satellite from the cargo bay shortly 
after midnight for several hours of studying the shuttle glow phenomenon and
shuttle steering jet firings.  Shuttle glow is an effect created by the
interaction of the shuttle's surfaces with atomic oxygen in low Earth orbit
and is being observed on the mission by the Far Ultraviolet Imaging 
Spectrometer aboard SPARTAN.  Following the conclusion of the 
SPARTAN-204 operations, the satellite was latched down in the payload bay.

Also today, crew members checked out the equipment that will be used for
Monday's rendezvous with the Mir space station.  All the equipment is in good
working order and ready to support the rendezvous.

Throughout the day, Discovery has continued to close the distance with Mir at a
rate of about 180 nautical miles with each orbit.  Discovery is now in an orbit
of 200 by 182 nautical miles, about 4,400 miles behind Mir.

One of Discovery's steering jets continues to slowly leak propellant, but the
leak has had no impact on the mission.  Flight controllers are continuing to
evaluate if it will pose any problem for the planned close approach to Mir.