MIR 25 CREW NEWS CONFERENCE SET



February 24, 1998



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



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

<h4>Release: N98-19</h4> <h3>Mir 25 Crew News Conference Set</h3> 

The three Mir 25 crewmembers, including U.S. Astronaut Andrew Thomas, 
will hold a news conference from the Mir space station on Thursday, 
February 26, starting at approximately 9:52 a.m. CST. The news 
conference, to be broadcast on NASA Television, will include question 
and answer capability for reporters at participating NASA centers.



The news conference will be carried through the Russian Altair 
satellite during a 30-minute window for television capability from 
the Mir, to be transmitted to the U.S. by satellite from the Russian 
Mission Control Center in Korolev. Interpretation will be provided 
for questions posed in English to the Russian crewmembers, and 
translation of their answers will be provided in English for members 
of the news media.



Mir 25 Commander Talgat Musabayev and Flight Engineer Nikolai Budarin 
arrived aboard Mir in late January for a six-month mission. They are 
scheduled to begin a series of spacewalks to perform maintenance work 
on the Mir and repairs to the damaged Spektr module next week. Thomas 
is in the second month of a four-month research mission as the last 
American who will live and work aboard the Russian outpost. He is 
scheduled to return to Earth in early June as part of the STS-91 crew 
following the docking of the Shuttle Discovery to Mir in late May.



NASA Television is carried on GE-2, Transponder 9C at 85 degrees West 
longitude, vertical polarization, frequency 3880 Mhz, audio 6.8 Mhz.

	
-end-