Tim Furniss/LONDON
NASA ASTRONAUT Norman Thagard became the first American to board a Russian space station on 16 March after the docking of the Soyuz TM21 spacecraft in which he and two Russian colleagues were launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome two days earlier.
Thagard, commander Vladimir Dezhurov and flight engineer Gennadi Strekalov were marking a key point in the first phase of a NASA/Russian programme which will lead to the joint construction and operation of the international space station Alpha, starting in 1997 (Flight International, 1-7 March).
The TM21 crew, who joined three Russians already aboard the Mir, will be returned to Earth on 17 June, by the US Space Shuttle Atlantis/STS 71, which will make the first, of seven planned Shuttle dockings to the Mir 1 on 12 June, two days after launch from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The STS71 will be launched with the next Russian crew to inhabit the Mir 1.
Thagard is the first of four NASA astronauts who will gain long-duration space experience in preparation for the Alpha programme. He will clock up 95 days, beating by nine days the record set by three Skylab astronauts in 1974. NASA is paying Russia $400 million to operate experiments aboard the Mir, which will include a new module, the Spektr, to be launched in May.
The latest launch marks the first occasion on which 13 people are in space. As well as the TM21 and Mir crews, seven astronauts were flying on the Endeavour/ STS67/Astro 2 Astronomy mission, due to last 15 days, a new Shuttle record. It is also the first time that eight Americans were in space at the same time.
The current Mir crew, Alexander Viktorenko and Yelena Kondakova, who were launched aboard the TM20 on 3 October 1994, and Valeri Poliakov, who flew to the Mir aboard TMl8 on 8 January, 1994, will return to Earth aboard the TM20 on 26 March.
This will give Poliakov a record flight of 442 days and Kondakova, 174 days, a record for a woman.
Russia has announced the planned schedule for other Mir-related missions this year, budgets permitting. These include the Progress M27 on 5 April, followed by the M28-31 in June, July, September and November. The Spektr module follows on 11 May; the TM22, with European Space Agency astronaut Christa Fuglesang, will be launched on 28 August; the Space Shuttle Atlantis/STS 74 takes off on 26 October; the Priroda module is launched on 5 December; and the TM23 follows on 25 December.
Source: Flight International
