GERMANY TO CONTROL NEXT FLIGHT'S EXPERIMENTS

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 20, 1993                   TAG: 9301200057
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA.                                LENGTH: Short
GERMANY TO CONTROL NEXT FLIGHT'S EXPERIMENTS
Germany's space agency will be calling the scientific shots from a control center near Munich when Columbia lifts off on a laboratory research mission in little over a month.
It will be only the second time in 32 years of American manned space flight that a mission is managed from outside the United States. The first, in 1985, featured German Spacelab 1.
Upcoming is Part 2.
NASA is aiming for a late February, or possibly early March, launch.
While Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston will oversee shuttle operations during Columbia's flight, all science operations will be directed by controllers at Germany's space operation center in the Bavarian town of Oberpfaffenhofen.
Five Americans and two Germans are assigned to German Spacelab 2, whose mission is scheduled to last nine days. English will be spoken throughout the flight, except when German dignitaries call the shuttle.
Ninety-three experiments are planned, two-thirds sponsored by German institutions and the rest by other European countries, the United States and Japan. There will be about 400 tadpoles and fish larvae on board as well as watercress seedlings and a robot arm.
The 2 1/2-foot-long robot arm has six joints, laser distance-measuring devices, tactile sensors and stereo TV cameras providing a robot's eye view of what's being handled.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB