Glenn swaps wired-up PJs for heart monitor

The world's oldest astronaut has traded his wired-up space pajamas for a snazzy heart monitor.

After sleeping two straight nights in a cumbersome head net and body suit equipped with 23 sensors, John Glenn got a chance to slip into something a little more comfortable.He spent his sixth night aboard the shuttle Discovery hooked up to a heart monitor with just seven electrodes and a miniature data recorder.

The device will determine whether the 77-year-old astronaut experiences any irregular heartbeats in space. Glenn donned the recorder Tuesday afternoon; it will be removed later Wednesday after collecting 24 hours of electrocardiogram data.

Glenn's heart rate shouldn't have risen too much when he got the election news Wednesday, courtesy of Mission Control.

Flight controllers sent the retiring Democratic senator from Ohio four Associated Press election stories. The news included, among other things, the Democratic victory in the California governor's race, the losses of GOP Senate incumbents Alfonse D'Amato of New York and Lauch Faircloth in North Carolina, and the Bush brothers' victories in Texas and Florida.

Glenn climbs back into his sleep-monitoring getup Wednesday and Thursday nights for the last of four sessions to measure his brain waves, breathing, eye movement and chin-muscle tension.

The first American to orbit the Earth, and now the oldest man ever to do so, remains enthusiastic about his role as a space test subject.

"I go back a long ways in Project Mercury, and things have developed now where we're using space as we thought it should be used: as a laboratory - a laboratory not for war but a laboratory for peace," he said earlier in the mission.

The astronauts began their seventh day in orbit after being awakened Wednesday morning by a Japanese cheering song.

"That song always gives me energy to do my best," Japanese astronaut Chiaki Mukai told Mission Control. "Another wonderful day with high energy."

As Glenn resumed his lab work Wednesday, his crewmates used the shuttle robot arm to grapple the Spartan satellite for a test of a remote camera system. The system is designed to give astronauts the ability to view areas that cannot be seen with the naked eye and will be used in constructing the international space station.

Spartan was back in Discovery's cargo bay after spending two days in space collecting images of the sun. Astronaut Stephen Robinson used a mechanical arm to slowly latch onto the 1 1/2-ton satellite Tuesday and place it back in its cradle.