Shuttle–Mir Program

The Shuttle -Mir program consisted of eleven missions of the Space Shuttle NASA in the years 1994 to 1998, where it docked the shuttle with the Russian Space Station Mir at nine. In addition, a total of seven U.S. astronauts flew long-duration missions on Mir with a duration of about half a year. The Shuttle -Mir program is referred to by NASA as Phase 1 of the ISS project. It was the first extensive space cooperation between the superpowers USA and Russia since the Apollo -Soyuz project dar.

History

After the first projects of the United States in manned space with the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo program, which led to the first manned moon landing, NASA began in 1981 on the Space Shuttle as the primary means of transportation for humans into space. The American moon landings marked a temporary end to the race into space between the United States and the Soviet Union and the beginning of a policy of détente in the Cold War.

The first milestone in this direction was the Apollo -Soyuz project in which there was the first direct coupling of an American and a Soviet spacecraft in Earth orbit.

While in the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviet Union put more on the development of large space stations like the Salyut or Mir, the space shuttle project devoured most funds NASA. As such, the U.S. space also had at the beginning of the 1990s - after the collapse of the Soviet Union - a deficit in the experience of long-term stays in space and the long-term operation and supply a space station in Earth orbit.

This situation as well as persistent budget problems now only Russian space provided fertile soil for the Shuttle -Mir program. The good cooperation allowed the United States to gain experience with space station operation, which flowed directly into the development of the U.S. segment of the International Space Station (ISS).

Shuttle -Mir begins

On 17 June 1992 the then U.S. President George Bush and his Russian counterpart Boris Yeltsin sign the Agreement Between The United States of America and the Russian Federation Concerning Cooperation in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space for Peaceful Purposes ( freely translated: "Agreement between the U.S. and Russia on cooperation in the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes "). Main part of this agreement is a "mission of the Space Shuttle and the Mir station, are involved in the U.S. astronauts and Russian cosmonauts ."

The first mission of the Shuttle -Mir program was STS -60 in February 1994, when for the first time a Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev flew with a shuttle. However, STS -60 is not the Mir station approached, this was only on the next Shuttle -Mir mission, STS -63 is the case, as the Discovery in February 1995 drew up to 12.2 m of the space station, but without docking. On March 14, 1995 Norman Thagard flew the first U.S. astronaut to the Russian Soyuz TM -21 to Mir space station, where he spent about four months.

On 27 June 1995, there was finally time Atlantis lifted off on mission STS -71 to Mir. They docked two days later at the station and remained six days docked until she returned to Earth. The crew of the Mir has been replaced.

Already at the next mission STS- 74, a special shuttle docking module (SDM ) has been delivered to me, by which the docking procedure has been greatly simplified. The SDM was developed jointly by Russians and Americans and represents the first space station module internationally manufactured

The next shuttle missions served to bring a U.S. astronaut on a long-term stay on Mir or pick them up. In addition, during the exchange of the Russian crew were also guests from France ( Claudie Haigneré and Léopold Eyharts ) or Germany ( Reinhold Ewald ) aboard Mir.

The Shuttle -Mir program ended in June 1998 and was replaced by cooperation in the construction of the International Space Station.

List of Shuttle -Mir missions

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