STS-71
As the third mission of the US/Russian Shuttle-Mir Program, STS-71 became the first Space Shuttle to dock with the Russian space station Mir. STS-71 began 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 wi
Key facts
- Spaceflight.name
- STS-71
- Spaceflight.names_list
- Space Transportation System-71
- Spaceflight.image
- Atlantis docked to MIR - GPN-2000-001315.jpg
- Spaceflight.image_caption
- Atlantis docked to Mir, photographed from the departing Soyuz-TM spacecraft Uragan
- Spaceflight.insignia
- Sts-71-patch.png
- Spaceflight.mission_type
- Shuttle-Mir
- Spaceflight.operator
- NASA
- Spaceflight.orbits_completed
- 153
- Spaceflight.mission_duration
- 9 days, 19 hours, 23 minutes, 9 seconds
- Spaceflight.launch_site
- Kennedy, LC-39A
- Spaceflight.launch_date
- UTC
- Spaceflight.landing_date
~10 min read
Article
7 sectionsContents
- Crew
- Crew seat assignments
- Mission highlights
- External tank
- See also
- References
- External links
As the third mission of the US/Russian Shuttle-Mir Program, STS-71 became the first Space Shuttle to dock with the Russian space station Mir. STS-71 began 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.
During the five days the Shuttle was docked to Mir, the combined spacecraft became the largest in orbit at the time. STS-71 marked several key achievements: it was the first Shuttle docking with a space station, the first crew exchange between a Shuttle and a station, and the 100th crewed space launch by the United States. The mission carried Spacelab and provided logistical resupply for Mir. The joint US/Russian crews conducted various life science investigations using Spacelab and performed the Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment-II (SAREX-II).