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Mir's troubles overshadow plans for new station
U.S., Russia learning from current problems
October 13, 1997
Web posted at: 12:55 p.m. EDT (1655 GMT)From Correspondent John Holliman
STAR CITY, Russia (CNN) -- Russia and the United States hope their joint experience with the trouble-plagued Mir space station will help smooth out any difficulties with a planned international space station.
Pieces of the ISS, a multi-billion dollar project involving 15 nations, are to be sent into space next summer. The first humans -- two Russian cosmonauts and one U.S. astronaut -- are due to arrive just over a year from now to begin a six-month mission. The three have been training for months at Russia's Star City complex near Moscow.
Problems with Mir may have overshadowed public awareness of ISS developments but that's not the intention, says Bill Shepherd, the U.S. astronaut who'll be the space station's first commander.
"This is the biggest stealth program we know," he told CNN. "It's very hard to get people fired up."
Shepherd and Russian cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Godzenko will be launched to the station in a Soyuz space ship, the same type of craft that sends cosmonauts to Mir.
See an animation of the future space station:
676K/21 sec. QuickTime movie
Krikalev, who has flown on a U.S. space shuttle and has spent months at a time on Mir, says the shuttle/Mir program and the new international station have forced two very different space cultures to become more like one.
"All of this is good experience (that) will help us to be efficient in new space station," he says.
Godzenko will command the Soyuz flight to the new station. After he gets there, he'll keep the Russian segments running. He and Krikalev have left Star City for the next phase of their training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
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Related stories:
- A day late, Mir casts off supply ship - October 7, 1997
- Supply ship fails to undock from Mir - October 6, 1997
- Leak in Mir may have been located - October 3, 1997
- Russians, Americans embrace in space - September 27, 1997
Related sites:
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- International Space Station - official NASA site providing an overview of the Space Station Program
- ISS Factbook - online version of the official International Space Station Fact Book
- NASA Shuttle-Mir Web - official NASA site for U.S. astronauts and their activities aboard the Russian Mir Space Station
- ISS Phase I - Space Station Mir - contains graphics and specifications of the diferent areas of MIR
- Russian Space Agency - homepage of the Russian Space Agency through the NASA site
- Russian Space Research Institute (IKI)
- MIR Space Station - news, research, history, images and links from Maximov Online
External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.
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