STS-71

STS-71
Atlantis docked to Mir, photographed from the departing Soyuz-TM spacecraft Uragan
NamesSpace Transportation System-71
Mission typeShuttle-Mir
OperatorNASA
COSPAR ID1995-030A Edit this at Wikidata
SATCAT no.23600
Mission duration9 days, 19 hours, 23 minutes, 9 seconds
Distance travelled6,600,000 kilometres (4,100,000 mi)
Orbits completed153
Spacecraft properties
SpacecraftSpace Shuttle Atlantis
Payload mass12,191 kilograms (26,877 lb)
Crew
Crew size7 up
8 down
Members
Launching
Landing
Start of mission
Launch dateJune 27, 1995, 19:32:19 (1995-06-27UTC19:32:19Z) UTC
Launch siteKennedy, LC-39A
End of mission
Landing dateJuly 7, 1995, 14:55:28 (1995-07-07UTC14:55:29Z) UTC
Landing siteKennedy, SLF Runway 15
Orbital parameters
Reference systemGeocentric
RegimeLow Earth
Perigee altitude342 kilometres (213 mi)
Apogee altitude342 kilometres (213 mi)
Inclination51.6 degrees
Period88.9 min
Docking with Mir
Docking portKristall forward
Docking dateJune 29, 1995, 13:00:16 UTC
Undocking dateJuly 4, 1995, 11:09:42 UTC
Time docked4 days, 22 hours, 9 minutes 26 seconds

Left to right – Seated: Dezhurov, Gibson, Solovyev; Standing: Thagard, Strekalov, Harbaugh, Baker, Precourt, Dunbar, Budarin
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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.

For the five days the Shuttle was docked to Mir they were the largest spacecraft in orbit at the time. STS-71 marked the first docking of a Space Shuttle to a space station, the first time a Shuttle crew switched members with the crew of a station, and the 100th crewed space launch by the United States. The mission carried Spacelab and included a logistical resupply of Mir. Together the Shuttle and station crews conducted various on-orbit joint US/Russian life science investigations with Spacelab along with the Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment-II (SAREX-II) experiment.