Space Shuttle Atlantis
NASA's Atlantis shuttle was originally scheduled to launch in March before a freak hailstorm in February riddled the insulating foam of the spacecraft's external fuel tank with pockmarks and forced engineers to spend two months repairing... [more]
NASA's Atlantis shuttle was originally scheduled to launch in March before a freak hailstorm in February riddled the insulating foam of the spacecraft's external fuel tank with pockmarks and forced engineers to spend two months repairing it.
U.S. Space Shuttle Docks With Russian Space Station
On This Day In History
June 29, 1995
The American space shuttle Atlantis docks with the Russian space station Mir to form the largest man-made satellite ever to orbit the Earth.
Millions of viewers watched on television as Atlantis blasted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in eastern Florida on June 27, 1995.
Just after 6 a.m. on June 29, Atlantis and its seven crew members approached Mir as both crafts orbited the Earth some 245 miles above Central Asia, near the Russian-Mongolian border. When they spotted the shuttle, the three cosmonauts on Mir broadcast Russian folk songs to Atlantis to welcome them. Over the next two hours, the shuttle's commander, Robert "Hoot" Gibson expertly maneuvered his craft towards the space station. To make the docking, Gibson had to steer the 100-ton shuttle to within three inches of Mir at a closing rate of no more than one foot every 10 seconds.
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