STS-49 Mission Control Status Report #14 

                        MISSION CONTROL CENTER
                           Status Report #14

Tuesday, May 12, 1992, 5 p.m.  CDT

Endeavour's crew spent the first half of its day practicing putting on
spacewalking suits and putting three crewmembers in the airlock at
once to test the capability of doing a spacewalk with three
astronauts.

Commander Dan Brandenstein and Pilot Kevin Chilton performed two burns
of the onboard reaction control system to begin closing in on the
Intelsat VI satellite for a third attempt at capturing and repairing
the stranded spacecraft.

The spacewalk this time will involve manually grabbing the satellite
at strategic locations, attaching the capture bar and then proceeding
with the preflight plan of using the orbiter's robot arm to grapple
the capture bar and maneuvering the satellite into position for
attachment to its boost motor.

During the day, astronauts Story Musgrave, Jim Voss and Rich Clifford
practiced techniques for capturing the Intelsat, including climbing
into the airlock in the water tank at the Johnson Space Center.  No
apparent problems were identified in placing three astronauts in the
airlock at one time.

The mission management team will meet later to make a decision on
whether to send two or three astronauts into the payload bay for the
capture attempt.