THE SOYUZ TM20 spacecraft separated from its mooring on the Mir 1 space station on 11 January and re-docked 26min later to qualify the Kurs docking system.
Malfunctions of the system have caused several previous automatic docking attempts to be aborted (Flight International, 19-25 October, 1994).
Cosmonauts Yelena Kondakova, Valeri Poliakov and Alexander Viktorenko flew the TM20 craft 160m from the Mir and safely re-docked automatically in a test which clears the way for the 14 March flight of the TM21, carrying the US astronaut Norman Thagard, and the long-delayed launch of the Spektr scientific module in May.
This will carry US equipment to support the latter stage of Thagard's 90-day stay and the joint operations planned in June for the Mir 1 and the Space Shuttle Atlantis/STS71.
Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome celebrated its 40th anniversary on 12 January. In 1954, military units arrived by railway at Tyuratam, Kazakhstan, to construct Pad 1 for the test launches of the R7 (SS-6) intercontinental ballistic missile designed by Sergei Korolev.
The P7 had its first full test flight in May 1957 and was later used to launch Sputnik 1. The centre was named Baikonur, despite being over 300km (185 miles) from the town of the same name.
Source: Flight International