STS-71

STS-71 was Atlantis' June-July 1995 Shuttle-Mir mission and the first docking between a U.S. Space Shuttle and Russia's Mir station. The flight launched from Kennedy Space Center's Pad 39A on June 27, 1995, with Robert Gibson commanding, Charles Precourt as pilot, and Ellen Baker, Gregory Harbaugh, Bonnie Dunbar, Anatoly Solovyev, and Nikolai Budarin as mission specialists. NASA identifies the mission as the 100th U.S. human space launch and the first Shuttle changeout of a Mir crew. Atlantis docked with Mir on June 29, opening several days of joint U.S.-Russian operations. Solovyev and Budarin, the Mir-19 crew, had launched on Atlantis to take over the station, while Mir-18 crewmembers Vladimir Dezhurov, Gennadi Strekalov, and Norman Thagard transferred to Atlantis for return to Earth. The combined crews carried out biomedical research, station logistics transfer, and handover work inside the joined Shuttle-Mir complex. The mission also flew the Spacelab-Mir laboratory in Atlantis' payload bay for life-sciences investigations, with the returning Mir-18 crew serving as important test subjects after more than three months in orbit. Atlantis undocked on July 4 after the Soyuz fly-around photographed the docked complex, then landed at Kennedy Space Center on July 7, 1995. STS-71 became the operational opening of the Shuttle-Mir docking phase and a major rehearsal for later International Space Station crew exchanges.