From NASA Shuttle Web site: http://shuttle.nasa.gov/sts-78/reports/status/

STS-78 Status Report # 35
Mission Control Center

8 a.m. CDT
Sunday, July 7, 1996

The Space Shuttle Columbia glided into Kennedy Space Center at 7:37 a.m.
CDT today, marking the end of the longest shuttle flight in program
history. Columbia’s life sciences and microgravity mission set the new
record by lasting 16 days, 21 hours and 48 minutes.

Columbia shattered the previous record set on mission STS-67 aboard
Endeavour in March 1995 of 16 days, 15 hours and 9 minutes. Columbia’s
seven member crew surpassed that record at 12:58 a.m. CDT today.

NASA-TV viewers got a unique perspective of today’s landing courtesy of the
first flight of an in-cabin camera mounted in the pilot’s window. A
hand-held camcorder on the flight deck and the pilot’s point-of-view camera
provided a live video downlink during Columbia’s descent for the first
time. The small "lipstick" camera, which provided the pilot’s point-of
 -view, was mounted to a bracket on the pilot’s glare shield.

Commander Tom Henricks and Pilot Kevin Kregel fired Columbia’s braking
rockets at 6:37 a.m. CDT to enable the shuttle to drop out of orbit for its
hour-long slide back to Earth. Columbia streaked across the Pacific Ocean,
before crossing north of the San Francisco Bay area, the southwestern
portion of the United States, northeastern Texas, central Louisiana, the
southern tips of Mississippi and Alabama before traveling into Florida and
landing on runway 33.

Columbia traveled 7,046,000 miles during its record-setting mission and
marked the 31st landing at KSC. Columbia’s astronauts will return to
Ellington Field at about 7:30 p.m. CDT after Henricks and Kregel
participate in an Olympic Torch Relay ceremony at KSC this afternoon.

###

posted by:
Bob Inderbitzen, NQ1R
Assistant to the Manager
Educational Activities Department
American Radio Relay League
225 Main Street  Newington CT 06111-1494  USA
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eof