Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: 20 Years Since the First Shuttle-Mir Docking Mission

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: June 29, 2015 at 10:13:54 AM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: 20 Years Since the First Shuttle-Mir Docking Mission

AmericaSpace
For a nation that explores
June 27th, 2015
'To Work Co-operatively': 20 Years Since the First Shuttle-Mir Docking Mission (Part 3)
By Ben Evans
Russia's space station Mir, as pictured by the crew of STS-71. Photo Credit: NASA
Twenty years ago, today, on 27 June 1995, a new era began. Space Shuttle Atlantis rocketed into orbit from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, as she had done 13 times previously, over the course of almost a full decade. Since her maiden voyage, she had embarked on a chequered career, flying more classified Department of Defense assignments than any of her sister orbiters, delivering both the Magellan and Galileo planetary spacecraft on their long voyages to Venus and Jupiter, supporting multiple Extravehicular Activities (EVAs), and deploying more than a dozen discrete satellites for science, reconnaissance, intelligence-gathering, and communications. Yet on 27 June 1995, Atlantis' mission was quite different, for STS-71 would attempt a feat for which the shuttle had always been intended: the docking and exchange of crew members aboard an Earth-circling space station. What could hardly have been anticipated, just a few years earlier, however, was that she would dock not at the U.S.-led Space Station Freedom … but at Russia's Mir orbital outpost. The remarkable 10 days of STS-71 would cement an unlikely partnership which, despite political differences, endures to this day.
As described in last week's AmericaSpace history articles, Atlantis was very much in the right place at the right time to become the first shuttle to be outfitted with the Orbiter Docking System (ODS) and associated instrumentation for missions to Mir. In the summer of 1992, shortly before her STS-46 mission, she was preparing to be withdrawn from service for a protracted period of maintenance and refurbishment at Rockwell International's facility in Palmdale, Calif. According to NASA's January 1992 shuttle manifest, Atlantis was expected to be out of service for a few months, receiving her modifications at KSC, ahead of flying the STS-57 mission. However, by late June 1992—following the first U.S.-Russian shuttle-Mir agreements, signed between NASA Administrator Dan Goldin and Director-General of the Russian Space Agency Yuri Koptev—it was announced that Atlantis would undergo her modifications in Palmdale, thus allowing the KSC workforce to concentrate on processing her sister orbiters for their missions. The shuttle-Mir enhancements required a more protracted out-of-service period for Atlantis, and she finally returned to flight on STS-66 in November 1994.
By pure happenstance, Atlantis happened to be about to enter a protracted period of modification when the shuttle-Mir contracts were signed in 1992. As a result, she was the primary orbiter outfitted for the docking missions. Photo Credit: NASA
Seven months later, on 29 June 1995, two days in her STS-71 mission, Atlantis docked smoothly with the Kristall module of Russia's Mir space station, to applause from both the U.S. and Russian Mission Control Centers (MCC). Aboard the shuttle were seven spacefarers—a "core" NASA crew of Commander Robert "Hoot" Gibson, Pilot Charlie Precourt, and Mission Specialists Ellen Baker, Greg Harbaugh, and Bonnie Dunbar, together with Russian cosmonauts Anatoli Solovyov and Nikolai Budarin, who were about to begin a multi-month stay on Mir—whilst on the other side of Kristall's hatch, inside the station itself, was a joint U.S.-Russian team of three men. Launched in March 1995, the incumbent Mir crew consisted of Commander Vladimir Dezhurov, his Russian crewmate Gennadi Strekalov, and U.S. astronaut Norm Thagard, the latter of whom had recently set a record for the longest single space mission ever undertaken by an American citizen. On 9 June, Thagard surpassed the 84-day accomplishment of the final Skylab crew, and by the time he returned to Earth aboard STS-71 he would have spent 115 days aloft on a single flight, and, when combined with his four earlier shuttle missions, would secure a new cumulative record for U.S. space experience of 140 days in orbit.
However, immediately after docking, everyone's attention was upon other matters, as pressurization and leak checks were conducted between Atlantis and Mir. In his NASA oral history, Precourt remembered floating into the ODS and spotting Dezhurov, Strekalov, and Thagard through the porthole. "The hatch is already open and we're doing pressure checks with our hatch," he recalled, "and our hatch opens last, to physically give us access, so you can look through this little porthole and wave to the guys on the other side and you can see that they're really antsy for us to open our hatch." In the aftermath of the leak checks, the hatch was finally opened and in a highly symbolic gesture—and offering a tip of the hat to the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), two decades earlier—the commanders of Atlantis and Mir, Gibson, and Dezhurov shook hands and exchanged smiles and greetings at the interface between the ODS and Kristall.
Precourt's first glimpse of Norm Thagard in the flesh was a comical one. "Norm," the newcomes shouted, "you guys are upside down!"
"Naw," retorted Thagard, by now accustomed to microgravity, after more than three months in free-fall. "You guys are upside down!"
After all seven STS-71 crew members had boarded Mir, the 10-strong group assembled for a televised welcoming ceremony. On that same day, 29 June 1995, their respective responsibilities shifted. After moving their personal gear and specially molded seat liners over to the Soyuz TM-21 spacecraft—which had been docked at Mir since March—Solovyov and Budarin immediately became the 19th long-duration crew of the aging station. Meanwhile, Dezhurov, Strekalov, and Thagard moved directly over to the shuttle and became STS-71 crew members for their eventual return to Earth.
For the next five days, more than twice as long as the joint operations had lasted on ASTP, the Atlantis-Mir combo circled Earth in a tight, mechanized embrace. During that period, medical samples from Thagard's research, including disks and cassettes, over 100 urine and saliva samples, 30 blood samples, 20 surface samples, 12 air samples, numerous water samples, and even breath samples were transferred to the shuttle. A broken computer from Mir was also removed, and about 990 pounds (450 kg) of water, generated by Atlantis for waste system flushing and electrolysis, was loaded into Russian tanks and moved over to the station for use by Solovyov and Budarin. Additionally, EVA tools for the repair of a solar array on Mir's Spektr module were transferred and oxygen and nitrogen from Atlantis' environmental control system were used to raise air pressure on the station to improve its consumables margins.
Mir Commander Vladimir Dezhurov (left) and STS-71 Commander Robert "Hoot" Gibson shake hands after hatch opening on 29 June 1995. Photo Credit: NASA
In the rear of the shuttle's payload bay, connected to the middeck and ODS by means of a pressurized tunnel, was the Spacelab module, flying for the first—and only—occasion aboard Atlantis. It was utilized for 15 shuttle-Mir research experiments on Dezhurov, Strekalov, and Thagard, with the studies led by Baker. These included six metabolic investigation, focusing on a range of physiological responses in the long-duration crew members' bodies, in order to ascertain how fluids redistributed themselves during extended spaceflights. The three men participated in efforts to understand whether prolonged microgravity exposure might impair their ability to mount an antibody response and if their immune cells had been altered in any way. Other experiments employed Russian and U.S. Lower Body Negative Pressure (LBNP) apparatus to assess their usefulness as countermeasures to the kind of "orthostatic intolerance" frequently reported by astronauts and cosmonauts upon their return to terrestrial gravity conditions.
As part of this research, Dezhurov, Strekalov, and Thagard would return to Earth in a reclining position, aboard custom-molded recumbent seats in Atlantis' middeck, with changes in their heart rates, blood pressure, voices, and posture continuously monitored through re-entry and landing. As part of ongoing neurosensory investigations, the crew measured muscle tone, strength, and endurance by electromyography, and utilization of oxygen during 1-2 hours of daily walking or running on a treadmill, together with other exercise sessions. Microbial samples were taken from both Mir and the shuttle, as well as specimens from the crew themselves, in order to determine if the closed environment of a spacecraft or space station affected microbial physiology and its interaction with humans in orbit. Muscle co-ordination and mental agility were also monitored.
The Spacelab module also supported a variety of other experiments. It provided a means to return the pre-fertilised Japanese quail eggs to Earth, following their launch aboard a Progress resupply craft in April 1995, and to deliver new sensors to Mir for the station's on-board greenhouse. A series of several hundred protein crystal growth investigations, frozen in a thermos-bottle-like vacuum dewar, were delivered to Mir for the next four months; it was intended that they would be retrieved and brought back to the ground by the second shuttle-Mir crew, during STS-74 in November 1995.
The agreements signed during the course of 1992-93 enabled this remarkable sight of a U.S. space shuttle docked with the Russian Mir Space Station. East and West were brought together in human space flight endeavors for the first time in almost two decades. Photo Credit: NASA
Early on 30 June, with the Russian tricolor and U.S. flags as a backdrop in the Spacelab module, the crews exchanged gifts, including the ceremonial joining of a halved pewter medallion, which bore a relief image of the docked shuttle-Mir combination. A 1/200-scale model of the two spacecraft was also joined, with the intention that both gifts would be presented to U.S. and Russian heads of state after the mission. Furthermore, a proclamation was signed by all 10 astronauts and cosmonauts, certifying the date and time of docking, which declared that "The success of this endeavor demonstrates the desire of these two nations to work co-operatively to achieve the goal of providing tangible scientific and technical rewards that will have far-reaching effects to all people of the planet Earth."
After a brief, but intense, five days of joint activity, the time inexorably drew nearer to close the hatches and prepare for Atlantis' return to Earth. Yet even this would produce its own raft of records and accomplishments. Having launched with seven crew members, the shuttle would land—for the first time in its history—with a larger crew of eight. Moreover, STS-71 would be the first shuttle mission to return to Earth carrying different crew members from those with which it had launched. And it would be the first shuttle flight to feature as many as 10 discrete crew members.
Perhaps most significant, though, was that—unlike ASTP, two decades before—STS-71 represented just the start of nine shuttle-Mir docking missions, more than two consecutive years of U.S. long-duration presence aboard the station and, despite political, technical, and very human difficulties along the way, the cementing of a real partnership between two old foes. That partnership has weathered much turmoil, particularly in the second decade of the present century, and yet has endured as a testament to those who made it possible.

Copyright © 2015 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

AmericaSpace
For a nation that explores
June 28th, 2015
'To Work Co-operatively': 20 Years Since the First Shuttle-Mir Docking Mission (Part 4)
By Ben Evans
Mir Commander Vladimir Dezhurov (left) and STS-71 Commander Robert "Hoot" Gibson shake hands after hatch opening on 29 June 1995. Photo Credit: NASA
Two decades have passed, this week, since one of the most remarkable instances of international co-operation ever seen in human history. For 10 days, between 27 June and 7 July 1995, six U.S. astronauts and four Russian cosmonauts—and thousands of engineers, managers, scientists, families, and friends who supported them and made their mission possible—completed the first docking between a space shuttle and the Mir orbital station. Unlike the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) in July 1975, this was not a "standalone" mission of détente, but the beginning of an era which would see two former foes join forces in support of a common goal. That goal bore fruit over the following years, with the construction of the International Space Station (ISS), and as noted in a proclamation signed by the 10-strong crew: "The success of this endeavor demonstrates the desire of these two nations to work co-operatively to achieve the goal of providing tangible scientific and technical rewards that will have far-reaching effects to all people of the Planet Earth."
In yesterday's AmericaSpace history article, the historic nature of shuttle mission STS-71 and the first docking was highlighted, as were the raft of records and empirical achievements accomplished. For the first time, the shuttle accomplished one of its original design goals—to dock with an Earth-circling space station and exchange crew members—and for the first time returned home with a different (and larger) crew than the one with which it had launched. Additionally, U.S. astronaut Norm Thagard set a new record, not only for the longest single mission ever accomplished by an American citizen (115 days), but also for the longest cumulative time spent in orbit by an American citizen (140 days), spread across his five career spaceflights. His record, to be fair, would not last long, being eclipsed by fellow astronaut Shannon Lucid in 1996, but marked the next step on the ladder as the U.S. sought to extend its long-duration experience and ultimately enabled the current One-Year Mission by Scott Kelly in 2015-2016.
Atlantis' five days docked to Mir proved largely uneventful from a systems perspective. With the exception of a General Purpose Computer (GPC) alarm on 30 June 1995—caused by the failure to synchronize with one of its siblings—only the most minor of issues troubled the shuttle during this period. The need to reset a troublesome hydrogen valve also disturbed STS-71 Commander Robert "Hoot" Gibson's sleep, and, early on 1 July, a temperature in one of the nose-mounted Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters fell briefly below its temperature redline, requiring the crew to adjust Atlantis' attitude to provide increased solar warming. "The temperature drop was not unexpected," NASA explained, "due to the inertial attitude the Atlantis/Mir spacecraft has been flying." Gibson and STS-71 Pilot Charlie Precourt also performed a thruster firing to test the integrity of the Orbiter Docking System (ODS) and found the hardware to be very secure.
The STS-71 and Mir crews gather for a group photograph inside the Spacelab module aboard Atlantis' payload bay. Photo Credit: NASA
It was already intended that Mir's new crew of Russian cosmonauts Anatoli Solovyov and Nikolai Budarin—who had arrived at the station aboard the shuttle—would board and undock the Soyuz TM-21 spacecraft from the aft longitudinal port of the Kvant-1 module about 15 minutes prior to Atlantis' own separation on 4 July, in order to capture still and video imagery from a station-keeping distance of about 330 feet (100 meters). In preparation for this task, on 2 July, they checked out their pressure suits and performed leak checks. Finally, on the afternoon of 3 July, the time came for the two crews to part and the returning STS-71 astronauts and cosmonauts gave Solovyov and Budarin gifts of flight pins, watches, fresh fruit, and tortillas.
The tortillas were Mission Specialist Bonnie Dunbar's idea. Having trained with Solovyov for a long-duration Mir expedition, she knew that he loved them; in fact, both he and Budarin enjoyed American food. There was plenty left over aboard Atlantis, so she took some tortillas—"great big, soft, Mexican tortillas"—over to him, shortly before the hatches were closed. At this point, Solovyov pulled her to him. Which side of the hatch would she like to stay on, he asked. Dunbar grinned. As much as she would have loved to remain aboard Mir for a long-duration mission, she told Solovyov that she had to return on the shuttle. Solovyov secured the hatch on the Mir side at 3:32 p.m. EDT, whilst Mission Specialist Greg Harbaugh did likewise in the ODS a few minutes at 3:48 p.m.
Fittingly, the undocking between Atlantis and Mir occurred in the early hours of U.S. Independence Day, 4 July 1995. At the same time, Solovyov and Budarin deactivated several station systems, in anticipation of their own undocking and flyaround. At 6:55 a.m. EDT, Soyuz TM-21 separated from Mir and soon reached a station-keeping position of about 330 feet (100 meters), from which Budarin acquired stunning imagery as Atlantis herself undocked at 7:09:45 a.m. The undocking procedure required Harbaugh to depressurize the ODS docking base and command the unhooking of latches, after which pre-loaded separation springs pushed the two spacecraft apart at low velocity. At a distance of a couple of feet (60 cm), after clearing the respective docking mechanisms, Gibson reactivated Atlantis' thrusters and pulsed them in a Low-Z mode to begin the relative separation. At 400 feet (120 meters), he began a steady flyaround inspection of Mir, during which time the redocking of Soyuz TM-21 was captured in still and video imagery at 7:39 a.m. The redocking occurred a minute earlier than planned when Mir's on-board computer malfunctioned and crashed. The station had been left in free drift during the brief flight, but was about 10 degrees off its correct attitude and was becoming unstable and starting to drift. Solovyov and Budarin restored the situation to normal.
From his perspective, Gibson described the maneuvers of Soyuz TM-21, Mir, and the shuttle as "a cosmic ballet." With eight crew members now aboard Atlantis, this was the joint largest crew ever carried aboard the shuttle in orbit during independent flight. Whilst the medical research continued aboard the Spacelab module, the pilots continued to maintain a steady separation distance from Mir. By the end of 5 July, they were 230 miles (370 km) "behind" the station and increasing their separation distance by about 10 miles (16 km) with each orbit, although Gibson was still able to see Mir as a far-off point of light.
With landing scheduled for early on the 7th, Mission Specialist Ellen Baker set to work assembling three recumbent seats in Atlantis' middeck for the returning Mir crew of Russian cosmonauts Vladimir Dezhurov and Gennadi Strekalov and U.S. astronaut Norm Thagard. Having the Russians aboard was a pleasant experience for the shuttle crew … and presented the opportunity for Dezhurov to prank at Precourt's expense. One day, Precourt was working with a volt ohm meter on the aft flight deck, repairing a broken circuit, when the cosmonaut floated up behind him and whispered "Pfftt" in his ear. "You can't jump in space, but you can sure go reeling in zero-gravity," Precourt told the NASA oral historian, "and I could've choked him, but he had this big grin on his face! It was just a neat experience to bring him on the shuttle, show him around and let him feel at home."
Twenty years ago, this week, the first Space Shuttle mission docked with Russia's Mir space station, laying the foundation for a new era of co-operation between two former foes. Photo Credit: NASA
In the meantime, most of the Spacelab hardware was deactivated and Gibson, Precourt, and Harbaugh prepared the shuttle's systems for re-entry. Two opportunities existed to land at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on 7 July, the first occurring a few seconds before 10:55 a.m. EDT and the second at 12:31 p.m. In contrast to the difficulties in getting Atlantis off the ground, her return to Earth was charmed, and at 9:45 a.m. the twin Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) engines were fired for the irreversible deorbit to begin an hour-long hypersonic plunge into the "sensible" atmosphere. Seventy minutes later, at 10:54:34 a.m., Gibson executed a perfect landing on KSC's Runway 15, wrapping up a 10-day voyage and one of the most spectacular human spaceflights ever accomplished.
A normal homecoming came as a great pleasure for Dezhurov and Strekalov, for two reasons. Obviously, they were relieved that they had returned to Earth safely, but secondly they were pleased that they were not challenged by the U.S. authorities for lacking passports and visas upon landing in Florida. During their final days aboard Mir, Strekalov pulled Thagard to one side and, in all seriousness, expressed concern that he had no passport or travel visa. Would he be arrested?
"I kept trying to allay Gennadi," said Thagard in his oral history. "Of course, he comes from a different culture, but knowing what I know of bureaucracy, I should have been worried a little bit for him, but I couldn't believe that in a million years they were going to arrest Veloga or Gennadi because they arrived in the United States with no passport. I hadn't even thought about it, but Gennadi obviously had been thinking about it quite a lot."
After 115 days, eight hours, and 43 minutes in flight, Dezhurov, Strekalov, and Thagard could have been forgiven for being a little unsteady on their feet. However, Thagard was one of the first of them to unstrap and stand up after landing. His recumbent couch was on the starboard side of Atlantis' middeck, farthest from the hatch, so he had to wait until Dezhurov, Strekalov, and—in a normal, upright seat—Bonnie Dunbar had departed before he could leave the orbiter. "I walked off with no assistance," Thagard recalled. "I didn't have that much of a problem." In fact, the biggest issue was the amount of monitoring equipment, including an electrocardiograph and an irritating blood pressure cuff, which rhythmically pumped itself up every few minutes, leaving his arm bruised and little feeling in his hand.
Within an hour or two of landing, after medical tests, he no longer felt "heavy," but it took a few days for him to return to his normal self. Nevertheless, the three men were flown back to Ellington Field in Houston, Texas, aboard an Air Force C-9 Medevac aircraft for several weeks of medical tests and readaptation to normal terrestrial gravity. The remainder of the STS-71 crew returned to Houston later on 7 July. "I still didn't feel totally gainly," Thagard said later. "I felt a little awkward; more so than on my shorter shuttle flights. I had a real sensation that if I were to bend forward, if I weren't careful, I'd continue to go forward, and if I bent back, if I weren't careful, I'd continue to go back."
Walking down hallways and turning, he felt the tendency to overshoot the corner, brushing his shoulder against a wall. "You just don't turn sharply enough," he said, "and that's all because of the gains that change in the vestibular system while you're there." By his own admission, after each of his four previous shuttle flights, Thagard had felt back to normal within about 24 hours of landing; after his Mir mission, it took around five days, which still represented a remarkably rapid readaptation to gravity. On 12 July, he went jogging with Charlie Precourt and Ellen Baker. "It was the hardest three miles I ever did," he said, "but I did it."

Copyright © 2015 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved