Jan 29 1998
From The Space Library
An Atlas rocket launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 1:37 p.m. (EST), after NASA had scrubbed the flight three days in a row. The Lockheed Martin rocket, which carried a classified spacecraft for the Pentagon's National Reconnaissance Office, separated from its passenger 1 %hours after launching, with the satellite successfully placed in orbit. The satellite, viewing two-thirds of the globe, was to circle the Earth in an egg-shaped orbit, taking it from 24,000 miles (39,000 kilometers) above the northern latitudes to just 200 miles (322 kilometers) above Antarctica.
Endeavour separated from Mir to head home at 11:57 a.m. (EST), returning David A. Wolf to Earth and leaving Andrew S. W. Thomas at the Mir station for a four-and-one-half-month stay. Wolf was returning to Earth aboard Endeavour after completing a 119-day stay on Mir. The new crew of Mir, two cosmonauts, Kazakh Talgat A. Musabayev and Russian Nikolai M. Budarin, and a French astronaut Leopold Eyharts, lifted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Soyuz TM-27, 23 minutes before Endeavour undocked from Mir.405
Fourteen nations and space agencies participated in a ceremony, signing final accords to build and manage the future ISS. Participating countries were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Acting Secretary of State Strobe Talbott signed, on behalf of the United States, the 1998 Intergovernmental Agreement on Space Station Cooperation, and NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin signed separate bilateral memoranda of understanding with heads of the Russian Space Agency, ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency. The new agreements superseded previous agreements concerning the ISS, which Canada, Europe, Japan, and the United States had signed in 1988.406
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