NINTH SHUTTLE-MIR DOCKING MISSION HIGHLIGHTS STS-91



June 1, 1998



Debbie Rahn/Jennifer McCarter
Headquarters, Washington, DC
(Phone: 202/358-1639)



Rob Navias
Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX
(Phone: 281/483-3671)

<h4>Release: J98-16</h4> <h3>Ninth Shuttle-Mir Docking Mission 
Highlights STS-91</h3> 

The first phase of the cooperative effort in space exploration between 
the United States and Russia will be completed in June 1998 with the 
launch of Space Shuttle Discovery on the ninth docking mission with 
the Russian Space Station Mir. The flight, designated STS-91, will 
deliver logistics and supplies to Mir and will bring home NASA 
Astronaut Andrew Thomas, who has been on the Russian complex since 
late January.



The STS-91 crew will be commanded by Charlie Precourt, who will be 
making his fourth Shuttle flight and third trip to Mir. The pilot, 
Dominic Gorie, will be making his first flight. There are four 
mission specialists assigned to STS-91. Franklin Chang-Diaz is 
serving as Mission Specialist-1 and the Payload Commander and will 
become only the third human to fly in space six times. Wendy Lawrence 
is making her third space flight as Mission Specialist-2 and flight 
engineer and is visiting Mir for the second time in less than a year. 
Janet Kavandi is Mission Specialist-3 and will be making her first 
flight. Valery Ryumin, a veteran Russian cosmonaut and manager of the 
Russian Mir program, will serve as Mission Specialist-4. STS-91 will 
be Ryumin&rsquo;s fourth space flight, his first aboard the Space 
Shuttle. After Discovery docks to Mir and Thomas once again becomes a 
Shuttle crewmember, he will be designated as Mission Specialist-5 for 
the remainder of the mission as he completes his second space flight. 
Discovery is targeted for launch on June 2, 1998 from NASA's Kennedy 
Space Center Launch Complex 39-A. The current launch time of 6:10 
p.m. EDT may vary slightly based on calculations of Mir's precise 
location in space at the time of liftoff due to Shuttle rendezvous 
phasing requirements. The STS-91 mission is scheduled to last 9 days, 
19 hours, 53 minutes. An on-time launch on June 2nd and nominal 
mission duration would have Discovery landing back at Kennedy Space 
Center on June 12th at 2:03 p.m. EDT.



STS-91 will be the first docking of Discovery with the Mir. The first 
eight docking missions were conducted by Atlantis and Endeavour.



Discovery&rsquo;s rendezvous and docking with the Mir actually begins 
with the precisely timed launch, setting the shuttle on a course for 
rendezvous with the orbiting Russian facility. Over the next two to 
three days, periodic firings of Discovery&rsquo;s small jet thrusters 
will gradually bring Discovery to its linkup to Mir.



The STS-91 mission is part of the Phase One program which has 
consisted of nine Shuttle-Mir dockings and seven long duration 
flights of U.S. astronauts aboard the Russian space station.



This series of missions has expanded U.S. research on Mir by providing 
astronauts with a laboratory in orbit for long-term research, similar 
to the kind of continuous research capability which will exist on the 
new International Space Station. By the time Discovery lands, U.S. 
astronauts will have spent almost 1000 days aboard Mir, including 
more than 26 months continuously since the arrival of Shannon Lucid 
on the STS-76 mission in March 1996.



For the STS-91 mission, Discovery carries the single SPACEHAB module 
in the payload bay of the orbiter which will house experiments to be 
performed by the astronauts and serve as a cargo carrier for the 
items to be transferred to Mir and those to be returned to Earth.



The current Russian cosmonaut crew aboard Mir began its mission on 
January 31 when Mir 25 Commander Talgat Musabayev and Flight Engineer 
Nikolai Budarin were launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in 
Kazakstan along with French researcher Leopold Eyharts. They arrived 
on Mir on January 31. Eyharts returned to Earth three weeks later 
with Mir 24 cosmonauts Anatoly Solovyev and Pavel Vinogradov. 
Musabayev and Budarin are scheduled to return to Earth on or about 
August 10 when they are replaced by the Mir 26 crew of Commander 
Gennady Padalka, Flight Engineer Sergei Avdeyev and researcher Yuri 
Baturin, who are scheduled to be launched August 2 for an docking on 
August 4.



During the docked phase of STS-91, astronauts and cosmonauts will 
transfer from the Mir to the Shuttle the science samples collected by 
Thomas and his Mir colleagues. Crew members will also transfer 
hardware and supplies to Mir in support of the Mir 25 crew and future 
science investigations on the station. This continued research will 
focus on studies in the areas of Advanced Technology, Human Life 
Sciences, and Microgravity Research.



The commercial initiated research from the Advanced Technology 
discipline will evaluate new technologies and techniques using the 
Mir space station and the Shuttle as a test bed. Such research in 
reduced gravity will contribute to an enhanced knowledge base for 
implementation on the International Space Station and other space 
vehicles.



Human Life Sciences research consists of investigations that focus on 
the crew members adaptation to weightlessness in terms of skeletal 
muscle and bone changes, cardiovascular acclimatization, and 
psychological interactions. This set of investigations will continue 
the characterization of the integrated human response to a prolonged 
presence in space.



Microgravity research has the general goal of advancing scientific 
understanding through research in materials science. The QUELD 
furnace will heat capsules containing metallic binary systems, bring 
them to room temperature, and return them to Earth for analysis of 
the effects of microgravity on diffusion processes. This experiment 
will be performed using the Microgravity Isolation Mount (MIM).



Also flying on the STS-91 mission is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer 
(AMS) experiment. As part of its long-standing role in high energy 
physics research, the U.S. Department of Energy is supporting the 
scientific leadership and part of the funding for the AMS experiment 
that will fly in the payload bay of Discovery and later on the 
International Space Station.



The AMS experiment is the first time a high energy physics experiment 
will be placed in orbit. As high energy physicists seek to find out 
how the world works, they ask such basic questions as: What are the 
ultimate building blocks of matter and what are the fundamental 
forces through which these basic particles interact?



Researchers will use the AMS detector to search for both antimatter 
and "dark matter" to answer two specific questions: First, if equal 
amounts of matter and antimatter were produced at the beginning of 
the universe as described by the Big Bang scenario, and the galaxies 
we now see are made only of matter, where has the antimatter gone? 
Second, since the mass of a galaxy seems to be greater than the 
visible mass of all its stars, gas and dust, is there dark matter of 
a new kind that has eluded discovery?



Also flying in Discovery&rsquo;s cargo bay will be four Get Away 
Special (GAS) and two Space Experiment Module (SEM) payloads that 
will examine the effects of microgravity on various plants and 
materials, study the way materials processing changes in space, look 
at new ways to extract oil from the Earth and clean up accidental 
spills in the environment as well as investigate the degree to which 
DNA is damaged by exposure to cosmic radiation in a space 
environment.



STS-91 will be the 24th flight of Discovery and the 91st mission flown 
since the start of the Space Shuttle program in April 1981.

	
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