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One more time
Thomas tests spacesuit NASA sending last astronaut to Mir
Andy Thomas is the seventh and last NASA astronaut to visit Mir. A successful four-month stay is sure to please and relieve NASA officials, who had continued the program despite a spate of mishaps on the aging space station.
Both Russia and American space officials have been interested in extending the life of the 12 year-old space station, which has been in orbit some seven years longer than planned.
NASA put astronauts on Mir for extended stays to prepare for the International Space Station Alpha. The United States, Russia, Japan, Europe and Canada are partners in the planned $60 billion space station, construction of which is scheduled to begin in June -- the same month Thomas returns to Earth. Officials hope to have the new space station, which like Mir will be sent up in pieces, in orbit by 2002.
Thomas, a 46-year-old Australian-born aerospace engineer who is now an American citizen, replaces David Wolf aboard Mir. Wolf has been there since September.
Endeavour lifts off from Cape Canaveral Thomas, aboard the space shuttle Endeavour which launched Friday, is scheduled to board Mir on Sunday. Endeavour's is the eighth of nine shuttle-Mir dockings. The final one will be when Discovery flies up to retrieve Thomas.
The first docking was in the summer of 1995. The first NASA astronaut aboard Mir, Norman Thagard, spent nearly four months there in 1995. Astronaut Shannon Lucid spent 188 days on Mir, the longest stay in space for a U.S. astronaut or any woman.
Endeavour also is carrying 5,000 pounds of supplies and equipment for Mir. The cargo includes food, water, a new air conditioning unit for Mir, where overheating is sometimes a problem, a motion-control computer and other supplies.
Thomas said he expects to spend as much time fixing the 12-year-old space station as conducting science experiments.
Thomas almost didn't make it aboard Mir. Wolf had been scheduled to go to Mir next January as the prime crew member for the last U.S. long-duration mission on Mir. But Wolf was moved up to replace Wendy Lawrence, who was rejected because she couldn't get a good fit in Russian spacesuits -- a requirement after last summer's collision between a cargo ship and Mir.
Once Wolf was moved up, Thomas -- his backup -- took Wolf's place on the final mission.
Goal: Extended stays in space
Mir's beginnings date back to a very different time in history when the Soviet Union was still in existence and the Cold War was hot. While the United States concentrated on moon landings and development of a reusable space shuttle, the Soviets focused on orbiting space stations, where cosmonauts could spend long periods of time doing scientific experiments and learning about the effects of extended stays in space on the human body.
The first of these, Salyut 1, was launched in 1971. The main module of Mir, the next generation of space stations, was launched unmanned 15 years later, with cosmonauts Leonid Kizim and Vladimir Solovyou docking up in a separate space capsule a short time later.
Because the station is modular, not all of the components that make up what is commonly referred to today as Mir (the word means both "world" and "peace" in Russian) were sent up in 1986.
Except for two brief gaps, the space station has been manned continuously ever since. It has made more than 60,000 orbits around the Earth.
Cold War project unites Americans and Russians
Mir's history took a turn in 1994 when the United States and Russia, which took over the space program after the Soviet Union disintegrated, agreed to conduct joint missions aboard the space station.
The Russians agreed to extend the use of Mir past its original design life of seven years, and a docking module was attached to allow U.S. space shuttles to link up with the Russian space station.
These joint U.S.-Russian missions are the first phase of a program to build the international space station. The first piece of the ISS was supposed to go into space in November 1997.
However, the financially-troubled Russian Space Agency missed deadlines in supplying needed equipment, delaying that launch until at least June 1998.
Recent problems on Mir -- including an accident and multiple computer failures -- pose additional obstacles for ISS as project planners consider whether astronauts on Mir at risk, and whether conditions on the Russian space station are conducive to research.
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