![]() ![]() ![]() The two were provided with small Russian-style apartments and, like typical Russian cosmonauts, had no washing machines, dryers or cars, according to NASA officials. Along with backup astronaut Bonnie Dunbar, he has been training for more than a year at Star City in living conditions much more basic than those experienced by astronauts in the United States. Thagard is the first American to participate in the exchange. Sergei Krikalev was the first, in February 1994 Vladimir Titov was aboard the shuttle Discovery last month when it had a near rendezvous with the Mir. Two cosmonauts already have flown in the shuttle. astronauts learning to speak Russian and training at Russia's Star City, 20 miles from Moscow, and Russian cosmonauts studying English and preparing at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Both countries have been preparing personnel for the new program, with U.S. The countries will work together in space to extend the life of the nine-year-old Mir - which was built to last only three to five years - until a new space station can be sent aloft by a five-nation consortium in late 1997.Ī total of seven shuttle dockings with Mir are expected in the next few years, with today's launch setting the stage for the first. astronauts will spend up to 21 months aboard the space station. shuttles will ferry American and Russian crews back and forth to the Mir, and U.S. Russia, which is struggling to keep its space program operating, will receive $100 million a year from the United States through 1997 in exchange for use of the Mir and information gathered from two decades of long-duration stays in space. The once adversarial American and Russian space programs are being brought together by using the strengths of each to develop a new international space station. The launch from this aging space center, which is leased from the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, was part of an ambitious joint research effort made possible by the end of the Cold War. They then will return to Earth aboard the space shuttle Atlantis, which is scheduled to dock with the Mir in mid-June and install a new Russian crew. Over the next two days, the three men will maneuver the craft to the Mir space station, then spend the next three months aboard the Mir conducting a variety of experiments on the effects of weightlessness on human beings. Millions of Russians watched on live television as the spacecraft disappeared into the stratosphere, and mission controllers said a short time later that it had achieved its prescribed initial orbit. EDT) after what appeared to be a flawless countdown. The giant rocket roared off the pad exactly on schedule at 11:11 a.m. astronaut Norman Thagard, 51, and two Russian cosmonauts were lifted skyward from the very launch pad that the Soviet Union used more than 30 years ago for its two greatest space triumphs over the United States - the launching of Sputnik, the world's first satellite, and the flight of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. In a symbol of how much the times and political climate have changed, U.S. astronaut for the first time blasted off this morning for the Mir space station on a mission designed to end three months from now with the historic docking of a U.S.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |