Mar 27 1996
From The Space Library
NASA astronauts Michael R. “Rich” Clifford and Linda M. Godwin made an historic spacewalk outside the orbiting Mir space station. For the first time, astronauts exited Mir with the Shuttle docked at the station. Clifford and Godwin, wearing jet packs as a precaution, scaled the passageway connecting Shuttle Atlantis with the Mir complex, installing several experiment boxes on the outside of the space station. Some of these boxes were "cosmic dust catchers," meant to gather samples of the materials that might smash into orbiting space stations. The spacewalk and associated experiments were part of ongoing research in preparation for the construction of the new International Space Station. NASA regarded the spacewalk as more dangerous than usual, because the Shuttle was docked with Mir and, thus, unable to give chase quickly if one of the astronauts broke away from the spacecraft.
Preparing to take over the administration of the Shuttle program from NASA, the Rockwell-Lockheed Martin joint venture, United Space Alliance (USA), named James C. Adamson as its chief operating officer. Adamson came to USA from Lockheed Martin, where he had served since 1994 as a group vice president and general manager of Lockheed's Engineering and Science Services. Adamson had served as an astronaut at NASA from 1984 to 1992, spending more than 334 hours in space as a part of Missions STS-28 and STS-43.
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