SB SAREX @ AMSAT $STS-78.002
STS-78 SAREX Mission Begins

Silver Spring, Maryland  USA
June 20, 1996 @ 20:00 UTC

The space shuttle Columbia began its Life and Microgravity Sciences (LMS)
mission this morning with an on-time launch from the Kennedy Space Center.
Its crew of seven were lofted into the mostly sunny Florida sky at 14:49 UTC.

This marks the 20th flight of Columbia and the 78th mission flown since the
start of the space shuttle program in April 1981.  The mission is currently
planned for 15 days, 22 hours in duration.  However, Mission Control will be
carefully managing and monitoring Columbia's electrical power consumption
with an eye towards extending the flight one day so that additional science
work can be performed.  If the extension day happens then the mission
duration could make the STS-78 flight NASA's longest Shuttle mission to date.

Columbia is utilizing an orbiting research laboratory to conduct a diverse
slate of experiments on how human beings and other living organisms along
with various materials change in a weightless environment.

The seven member crew includes three ham radio operators: Mission Specialist
Susan Helms, KC7NHZ; Charles Brady, N4BQW; and Payload Specialist Bob Thirsk,
VA3CSA.  The other four shuttle crew members include Commander Tom Henricks,
Pilot Kevin Kregel, Mission Specialist Rick Linnehan and Payload Specialist
Jean-Jacques Favier.

At this time, there are no trim burns planned from Rev 4 until the deorbit
burn, so the Spacelab mission orbit should be fairly stable.  However, this
is a fairly low altitude flight (146 x 150 n.mi., decaying to 138 x 149 by
deorbit), so the drag values will be higher than a 190 n.mi. orbit and
increasing.  This means that new orbital elements will be sent out no more
than once a day by the SAREX Working Group.  A day will be skipped if it
looks like the previous set is still good to within 10 seconds.

SAREX operations are expected to be initiated on Flight Day 3 (Saturday,
June 22).

The prelaunch Keplerian element set is still good within a few seconds:

STS-78
1 99978U          96172.67461119  .00151561  00000-0  28023-3 0   103
2 99978  39.0091   9.5805 0010198 336.2868  23.7631 15.98430480    24

Satellite: STS-78
Catalog number: 99978
Epoch time:      96172.67461119    =    (20-Jun-96   16:11:26.40 UTC)
Element set:     010
Inclination:       39.0091 deg
RA of node:         9.5805 deg            Space Shuttle Flight STS-78
Eccentricity:     .0010198               Prelaunch element set JSC-010
Arg of perigee:   336.2868 deg          Launch:  20-Jun-96 14:49:00 UTC
Mean anomaly:      23.7631 deg
Mean motion:   15.98430480 rev/day                Gil Carman
Decay rate:    1.51561e-03 rev/day^2       NASA Johnson Space Center
Epoch rev:               2
Checksum:              314


Mission orbital mechanics information courtesy Gil Carman, WA5NOM.


Submitted by (Pat Kilroy, WD8LAQ for) Frank H. Bauer, KA3HDO for the
SAREX Working Group

/EX