Aug 7 1997
From The Space Library
A relief crew of two Russian cosmonauts, Anatoly Y. Solovyev and Pavel V. Vinogradov, arrived at Mir to begin repair work on the damaged space station. On 25 June 1997, Mir had suffered its worst accident, when a robotic supply craft attempting to dock pierced the exterior of one of its research modules. The arriving crew, carrying tools and equipment, also had difficulty docking. As Soyuz approached Mir, its autonomic docking system failed, forcing Solovyev to override the system and pull Soyuz back. Solovyev then successfully docked the relief vehicle using manual controls. The crew planned to repair Mir's failing oxygen-generating system, before reconnecting the damaged research module to the rest of the station. Both NASA and the Russian Space Agency stressed that Mir had sufficient oxygen reserves in the event that the oxygen generator failed altogether. After repairing the oxygen system and the research module, the new crew planned to make as many as six spacewalks to repair the external damage caused by the June collision. Cosmonaut Solovyev brought significant experience to the mission; he had resided on Mir during four earlier missions, spending a total of 456 days in space. NASA planned for British-born U.S. astronaut C. Michael Foale to remain on Mir, although the Russian Space Agency was replacing its crew aboard the space station.
Shuttle Discovery Mission STS-85 launched, carrying Commander Curtis L. Brown Jr., Pilot [[Kent V. Rominger], and astronauts N. Jan Davis, Robert L. Curbeam Jr., Stephen K. Robinson, and Canadian [[Bjarni V. Tryggvason], who planned to conduct studies on Earth's ozone layer and to test a newly engineered robotic arm. The test on the small robotic arm, a prototype of the one planned for the International Space Station (ISS), continued NASA's trend of using Shuttle missions to prepare for the much-anticipated space station. Discovery also carried a 7,000-pound (3,200-kilogram) German satellite, which would orbit freely for most of the 10-day mission, gathering data on the declining ozone layer. Brown emphasized the international flavor of the crew and cargo saying, "one word for our mission would be diversity." With this mission, its 23rd flight, Discovery tied with Columbia for the most missions by a single vehicle.
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