Don Savage
Headquarters, Washington, DC               September 29, 
1995
(Phone:  202/358-1547)

Fred Brown
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
(Phone:  301/286-7277)

RELEASE:  95-164

SPARTAN 201 SUCCESSFULLY ACCOMPLISHED MISSION

     NASA scientists reported today that Spartan 201 
successfully completed its mission on a Space Shuttle flight 
earlier this month.

     Project Scientist Dick Fisher, at the Goddard Space 
Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, reported that the tapes 
retrieved from the Spartan 201 indicated that the free-
flying spacecraft appears to have done its job properly and 
both instruments worked as planned through virtually all of 
the mission.

     Concern about whether the Spartan had operated 
correctly was raised when the spacecraft was to be retrieved 
during the STS-69 mission on Sept.10.  At that time, the 
crew reported that Spartan was rotating slowly, and its 
batteries seemed to have been drained.  Until the spacecraft 
could be examined following landing, it was not possible to 
know whether it had accomplished its mission of observing 
the Sun's northern polar regions.

     "The White Light Coronagraph instrument obtained 
spectacularly good data over 95 percent of the planned 
observing sequence," Fisher said.  

     Data from the Spartan 201 Ultraviolet Coronagraph 
Sepctrometer instrument are being examined, and scientists 
say that preliminary findings show the data are excellent.

     Starting in the near future, scientists will begin an 
in-depth study of the data contained on the tapes from the 
two Spartan 201 instruments.  Engineers will study 
"housekeeping data" from the spacecraft to determine why the 
Spartan behaved as it did.

                    - end -

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