Mission to Mir Page #2

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a guy who flew MIGs across the border

when I was on the west side flying F-15s...

and marvel at the beauty of our planet and

share that moment with him verbally...

I was probably doing myself a disservice.

Soon Charlie will share that moment

with these cosmonauts...

when the shuttle docks with MIR

for the first time.

Anatoly Solovyev, on the left,

has already logged...

more than six months in space.

Next to him is cosmonaut-engineer

Nikolai Budarin, making his first flight.

If anything goes wrong in space,

the Soyuz is their lifeboat.

Inside this centrifuge,

cosmonauts condition themselves...

for the forces they'll encounter

during launch and landing...

up to eight times Earth's gravity.

For cosmonaut and astronaut alike,

the zero-G experience is basic training.

And for a space traveler,

the training never stops.

The cosmonaut gymnasium

is a great place...

for all cosmonauts and astronauts

to get together...

especially at the end of the day.

Where is your power?

You'll find not just

Americans and Russians...

but there are people

from all different countries in Europe.'

Claudie Andre-Deshays

from the French Space Agency...

a lot of German astronauts

getting ready to fly on the MIR.

Folks from many different countries

training to fly with the Russians.

You get a chance to socialize

and compare experiences.

Anatoly and his family live

in a comfortable apartment in Star City.

I have lived in Star City for 20 years.

I have a wife and two sons,

and I have a dog.

Anatoly and Nik will train

for their shuttle launch in Texas.

Now it's their turn for some culture shock.

When we first came to Texas,

it was quite unusual for us...

that we were so popular.

Every day we were asked

to a social occasion...

and this was very pleasant for us.

This is the home of Astronaut Ellen Baker.

She and crewmate Bonnie Dunbar...

will join Charlie and the two cosmonauts

aboard Atlantis...

the first shuttle to dock with MIR.

And the handoff has been completed.

This is the first mission

to exchange Russian and American crews.

It'll bring back Norm Thagard,

the first American to live on MIR.

Norm and his cosmonaut crewmates

have been four months in space.

10, 9, 8, 7, go for main engines.

- Wow!

- Is that cool or what?

The pilot has to control

eight parameters simultaneously...

to make this a successful docking.

You have two 100-ton vehicles

that are going to collide...

and you can cause great destruction

if you don't do that exactly right.

If it is not in the right position.'

left, right, up, down, in or out...

it will not mate correctly.

But even more complex,

we had to combine our position...

our orientation, our speed

and our time of arrival...

so we would be over Russia...

for ground communications with Moscow

plus or minus two minutes.

It shows about...

three feet.

Fifty seconds.

The module looks pretty good here.

Forty seconds.

It's two feet.

Twenty-five seconds.

And we have overlap.

. 1106.

Eight inches.

- . 1 or.07?

- 106.

Four inches.

We have capture.

Mission Commander Hoot Gibson

opens the hatch.

Just the kind of thing

that was totally unexpected.

You open the hatch

and the first comment was.'

"No, you guys are upside down."

Congratulations, Space Shuttle Atlantis,

Space Station MIR.

After 20 years,

our spacecraft are docked in orbit again.

Anatoly, being the veteran cosmonaut

that he was...

had been there many times before.

For Nikolai, it had to be very exciting

because this was his first visit to the MIR.

The crew that was operating the station

when we arrived was...

the Mission Commander,

Vladimir Dezhurov...

and the "boort engineer,"

or flight engineer, Gennady Strekalov.

The base block

is the central module of MIR...

but it's also the meeting place...

very much like my kitchen

is the meeting place in my house.

There's a table and it's a gathering place...

whether it's work, whether it's a meal,

if it's just a time to relax.

That high-tech piece of equipment

is their vibration sensor...

and every time the MIR shakes,

the little bird will tweet.

Gennady and I are transferring

a tank of water...

that's been supplied

from the space shuttle, over to the MIR.

We transferred two and a half times

the original planned water transfer...

some 1,067 pounds.

We were busy as beavers during

the course of the five docked days...

bringing that stuff back and forth.

During their stay, Vladimir,

Gennady and Norm Thagard...

have consumed some 330 meals

around this table.

Treats from home are much prized,

and saved for special occasions.

This will be Norm 's last sleep on MIR.

Norm was the only American

ever to ride a Russian rocket to space.

He had studied Russian

for about three years before the flight.

We learned a lot

about the psychological aspects...

of family separation

from Norm 's stay on the MIR.

One of the things we've suggested

for the future space station.'

It's, in Russian, a "kyuta,"

which means "stateroom."

You can also see the window

which is a very nice feature...

because you could look out

and see the Earth or the stars.

Then it was Norm 's turn

to show the space shuttle...

to Vladimir and Gennady.

Particularly the Spacelab...

where they'd be doing

the in-flight testing to find out...

what the effect had been on them

of being in space that long.

We make some measurements...

to help us understand how the body

has adapted over a long period of time.

We make similar measurements

after return to Earth...

to see what the body has done

in readaptation.

We had a new system...

for seating and re-entering

the long-duration crew members.

The backs of the seats are on the floor...

and you see, we made room

for their feet in the lockers there.

This gave them a little

extra "G"protection...

and made for a very soft landing.

In 24 hours, they'll pack everything up...

the orbiter will undock from MIR,

and return home.

Anatoly used to call us "the hurricane."

He'd say that the "urahgan proshol"...

which in Russian means

"the hurricane has blown through."

When we left,

we shook hands with Anatoly and Nik...

closed the hatch, and you knew

that it got very, very quiet on their side.

It's a bittersweet moment

when you leave friends behind...

and you watch the two vehicles separate.

It's a very true thing

that the hurricane has blown through...

and you know you are saying goodbye,

and you don't really want to.

Because the shuttle has wings,

it can glide softly to a landing.

For Anatoly and Nik,

inside the smaller Soyuz capsule...

the ride back will be a lot rougher.

Anatoly does a final checkout

of their re-entry suits.

Soyuz undocks from MIR

and the two cosmonauts head for home.

They'll aim for the plains of Kazakhstan.

Soyuz isn't a glider like the shuttle.

The only way to land this spacecraft is

to parachute straight down to the ground.

You have to prepare yourself.

This is a strong impact.

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