The Week in Space

June 21-27, 2010

Another Handshake in Space  In 1994, the United States and Russia began a series of joint missions known as Shuttle-Mir. The project began with a Russian cosmonaut, Sergei Krikalev, flying on a shuttle mission, but it progressed to regular shuttle dockings and crew exchanges with the Mir space station. The first Shuttle-Mir docking mission began fifteen years ago this week. Three days after the launch of the STS-71 mission, the space shuttle Atlantis docked with Mir. Atlantis (seen here from a viewing port on Mir) brought home three Mir veterans who had been on board for over three months, and dropped off two cosmonauts to take their place. The historic STS-71 mission came almost exactly twenty years after the first U.S.-Soviet docking in space, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, which took place in July 1975.

Image credit: NASA

Weekly Calendar

June 21-27, 2010

Holidays - Sky Events - Space History

Monday 21

Summer Solstice 7:28 AM

1993: STS-57 Endeavour launched
2004: SpaceShipOne launched, first privately-funded human space flight

Tuesday 22

1675: Royal Greenwich Observatory founded
1973: 28-day Skylab 2 mission ends
2000: NASA announces evidence of present-day liquid water on Mars

Wednesday 23

Thursday 24

St. Jean Baptiste Day (Québec)

1999: FUSE spacecraft launched

Friday 25

Ceres 1° south of Moon
Pluto at opposition

Saturday 26

Full Moon 7:30 AM ET

Sunday 27

1982: STS-4 Columbia launched
1995: STS-71 Atlantis launched
1997: NEAR-Shoemaker probe flies by asteroid Mathilde

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