STS-71
STS-71 was the third mission of the US/Russian Shuttle-Mir Program and the first Space Shuttle docking to Russian space station Mir. It started on June 27, 1995, with the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis from launchpad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Shuttle delivered a relief crew of two cosmonauts Anatoly Solovyev and Nikolai Budarin to the station and recovered Increment astronaut Norman Thagard. Atlantis returned to Earth on July 7 with a crew of eight. It was the first of seven straight missions to Mir flown by Atlantis, and the second Shuttle mission to land with an eight-person crew after STS-61-A in 1985.
Atlantis docked to Mir, photographed from the departing Soyuz-TM spacecraft Uragan | |
| Names | Space Transportation System-71 |
|---|---|
| Mission type | Shuttle-Mir |
| Operator | NASA |
| COSPAR ID | 1995-030A |
| SATCAT no. | 23600 |
| Mission duration | 9 days, 19 hours, 23 minutes, 9 seconds |
| Distance travelled | 6,600,000 kilometres (4,100,000 mi) |
| Orbits completed | 153 |
| Spacecraft properties | |
| Spacecraft | Space Shuttle Atlantis |
| Payload mass | 12,191 kilograms (26,877 lb) |
| Crew | |
| Crew size | 7 up 8 down |
| Members | |
| Launching | |
| Landing | |
| Start of mission | |
| Launch date | June 27, 1995, 19:32:19 UTC |
| Launch site | Kennedy LC-39A |
| End of mission | |
| Landing date | July 7, 1995, 14:55:28 UTC |
| Landing site | Kennedy SLF Runway 15 |
| Orbital parameters | |
| Reference system | Geocentric |
| Regime | Low Earth |
| Perigee altitude | 342 kilometres (213 mi) |
| Apogee altitude | 342 kilometres (213 mi) |
| Inclination | 51.6 degrees |
| Period | 88.9 min |
| Docking with Mir | |
| Docking port | Kristall forward |
| Docking date | June 29, 1995, 13:00:16 UTC |
| Undocking date | July 4, 1995, 11:09:42 UTC |
| Time docked | 4 days, 22 hours, 9 minutes 26 seconds |
|
Left to right – Seated: Dezhurov, Gibson, Solovyev; Standing: Thagard, Strekalov, Harbaugh, Baker, Precourt, Dunbar, Budarin | |
For the five days the Shuttle was docked to Mir they were the largest spacecraft in orbit at the time. STS-71 marked the first docking of a Space Shuttle to a space station, the first time a Shuttle crew switched members with the crew of a station, and the 100th crewed space launch by the United States. The mission carried Spacelab and included a logistical resupply of Mir. Together the Shuttle and station crews conducted various on-orbit joint US/Russian life science investigations with Spacelab along with the Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment-II (SAREX-II) experiment.