June 22, 2020 - Another Handshake in Space

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 25 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 20 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 22 - 28, 2020

Holidays - Sky Events - Space History

Monday 22

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