Documents - Mission Interviews

Mir-21 Mission Interviews

Following are links to interviews that took place during Mir-21

Shannon Lucid, NASA-2 Mir Resident - 4/5/96
Frank Culbertson, Phase 1 Program Manager - 4/19/96
Tom Sullivan, Phase 1 Mission Scientist - 4/26/96
Wendy Lawrence, Director of Operations, Russia - 5/3/96
John Uri, Phase 1 Mission Scientist - 5/10/96
Richard Fullerton, EVA Working Group Co-chairman - 5/17/96
Charles Brown, Training Working Group Co-chair - 6/7/96
Frank Culbertson, Phase 1 Program Manager - 7/12/96
Mir-21 Crew News Conference - 7/19/96
John Uri, Phase 1 Mission Scientist - 7/19/96
Charles Stegemoeller, Project Manager/Spektr Module - 7/26/96
Greg Lang, STS-79 Lead Systems Integration Engineer - 8/9/96
Frank Culbertson, Phase 1 Program Manager - 8/16/96

Television Interview with Shannon Lucid - Week of April 5, 1996

On Wednesday, April 3, The Cable News Network interviewed Dr. Lucid. The following are excerpts of that interview.

About living on the space station:

We do a lot of our work here in the core module in the Base Block. This is where we eat. We have been eating all our meals together and this is where we talk to Mission Control. I sleep in the Spektr module; it's a very nice place. Yuri and Yuri both sleep here in the base module and then I spend a fair amount of time over in Kvant1 because theres a great big nice window from which I can look out at the earth, which of course I enjoy doing!

About the weather aboard Mir:

The humidity, I would say, is sort of close to being an average day in Houston. My index for how humid it is is whether I would have to use lip chap or not, and I havent had to use any so far. From the humidity standpoint it's very comfortable;the air is clean and it doesnt have an odor.

About talking with her family:

Last Sunday, I had a video conference with my family and it worked out real well. They were sitting in a conference room at the Johnson Space Center and I was floating up here on Mir and we were able to talk to each other. We will be able to do this about every other week, so that will work out just fine. Then on every week we will be able to talk to each other just by voice, so I think we will be in close contact.

Read more about Shannon Lucid and NASA-2

Read Shannon Lucid's Oral History (PDF)

Read Shannon Lucid's Letters Home

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Mir Increment
Summaries

Interview: Frank Culbertson - Week of April 19, 1996

The work of Shannon Lucid and other astronauts involved in the Shuttle-Mir project is the first phase of a three-phased approach to the development of the International Space Station. Their efforts are being watched with great interest by the Phase 1 Program Manager, former astronaut Frank Culbertson, who was interviewed on April 19.

Question: Shannon Lucid has been in orbit for almost a month now. What is your assessment of her adaptation to her long duration flight and the start to this permanent U.S. presence in space?

Answer: Shannon is doing an outstanding job, and things are going very well. She's been very busy with her crewmates; they're getting a lot of experiments done. She seems to have adapted to life on the Mir very well, seems to be very happy, and has found where all the little pieces and parts are on the Spektr. She is conducting the program, We're very happy with her.

Question: Any personal observations on the differences or similarities between Lucids first month on the Mir, compared to Norm Thagards first month on the Mir last year?

Answer: I think the biggest difference is that the Mir has more capability now with the addition of the solar arrays Spektr brought up and the fact that they're in a better position for power and energy generation. They're much more comfortable and have more communication capability. So we're able to follow things more closely on the ground and she's able to get more information from the ground.

Question: On Tuesday, the final piece to the Mir will be launched as the Priroda module heads for its docking to the station a week from today. What makes Priroda so important for both the U.S. and Russian work being conducted aboard Mir?

Answer: Priroda has about a thousand kilograms of U.S. science hardware onboard as well as science hardware for the Russians and the international partners, so people have been eagerly awaiting its arrival so they can get going with other disciplines in the science research areas such as microgravity. It has a glovebox onboard, a number of experiments Shannon will be operating, and people are very excited about its arrival on orbit very soon.

Question: Once Priroda arrives at the Mir a week from today, what will Lucid and her crewmates do to set it up for operational use?

Answer: First, it will have to be moved from where it docks to another port so it can clear that port for the future arrival of a Progress vehicle. Then they'll open the hatch and begin to unstow whatever provisions have been stowed inside. There will probably be some food and things like that onboard like there is for any module that comes up. And then they'll start to activate the science, find out where everything is stored and start setting up shop for research.

Question: Finally, Frank, now that the Mirs configuration is almost complete, what does this mean for the future of the Russian Station and its longevity in support of U.S. cooperative research onboard?

Answer: It's a very positive step. They've got two relatively new research modules onboard the Mir now, the Spektr and the Priroda - or they will have as soon as Priroda arrives. They are improving their power situation with new solar arrays that both they and we have provided. We have regular trips to the Mir with the shuttle that carries logistics, and they've got their regular Progress flights. They're well provisioned and I think they are seeing that the Mir can last several more years now. As we are building the International Space Station, Mir will continue to conduct research, and as it phases down the International Space Station will begin to phase up, so we should have a fairly seamless operation if things go as planned.

Read Frank Culbertson's Oral History (PDF)

Interview: Tom Sullivan - Week of April 26, 1996

Question: With this morning's arrival of the Priroda module at the Mir Space Station, the Russian complex is now complete. What will Priroda provide in terms of an added scientific capability for Shannon Lucid and other U.S. astronauts to follow her on the Mir?

Answer: We were thrilled to see it dock because Priroda does bring about five major U.S. science facilities to the Mir with some additional Earth observation equipment mounted on the outside. Three of these facilities are microgravity investigations, one of them is a facility to measure metabolism and physiology parameters aboard a space station, and one will study how the microgravity environment of Mir is affected by crew motions. There are also two packages that went up inside Priroda that will later be moved outside during an EVA. Finally, one of the more mundane things of a space station is that there is never have enough closet space. Priroda does bring a great deal of additional stowage volume for science hardware that will be brought up on future shuttle flights.

Question: The Priroda is loaded with about a ton of U.S. scientific hardware. What are some of the experiments which Lucid will be unloading and activating over the next few weeks to expand her scientific workload?

Answer: Most of the Earth observation investigations are mounted on the outside, so there wont be much of her time involved in that; they are controlled from the ground. She will continue the Earth observation photography that she has already begun onboard the Mir. The bulk of her time will be involved in performing some of the science investigations in the other six disciplines or so that she has been committed to. That will involve some microgravity investigations in the fluid physics area and materials science. Many of these topics are relevant to society and industry today. She has about 500 hours committed to performing research in addition to her commitments as a Mir crew member.

Question: Priroda is designed for earth resource work and environmental studies. How much of Lucid's time is likely to be spent in those types of disciplines and how much time will be spent on the U.S. experiments now augmented by Priroda's presence at the Mir?

Answer: She started right in and was very successful, as soon as the STS-76 mission docked. She has already completed one of the fundamental biology investigations that looks at how gravity affects the development of embryos in space. She has also completed an investigation that looks at how metal alloy formation can occur without the confounding effects of gravity. Thats done in the Russian Optizon furnace. Shell be continuing many of these investigations in addition to the life sciences investigation. Shes looking at how her body adapts to the space environment, shes looking at the Mir environment itself, and shes looking back at the Earth environment.

Question: Lucid has been aboard the Mir for almost five weeks now. Give us a rundown on the progress of her work with the scientific hardware on the Mir and the highlights of that activity so far.

Answer: The first thing is the very critical bringing up of all the systems onboard the Priroda, and thats the number one thing to enable later research. Many of the investigations she is performing will be continued by later astronauts, but not all of them. The important thing to note is that when you have problems in research in space, when you have a continuous presence, you can overcome these things by sending up new equipment or new procedures, and solve the problems. I think thats the real steppingstone the Phase 1 program is providing to the space station era.

Read more about Shuttle-Mir Science

Interview: Wendy Lawrence - Week of May 3, 1996

Astronaut Wendy B. Lawrence is the NASA manager of operational activities at Star City, Russia. As Director of Operations, Russia, Lawrence supports training and preparations of NASA astronauts at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (GCTC), Star City. She is the sixth astronaut to serve in this rotational assignment, which continues to establish operational and managerial relationships with Star City management and Russian cosmonauts.

Question: What are your responsibilities at the training center? How closely do you work with the astronauts to keep their training on track?

Answer: There is a wide variety of responsibilities that fall under the job description of Director of Operations. There are actually several people here in Star City who have come over here to directly support the astronauts during their training flow. The Director of Operations happens to be in charge of the staff. There's also an individual from the Johnson Space Center who is here to work as a scheduler for the astronauts, and we also have an individual who just came onboard to essentially work as their training team. We are working very, very closely with our Russian counterparts to ensure the astronauts are receiving the training they need, particularly in the area of scientific research that we have slated during their mission. We have to make sure that training gets accomplished and they are prepared for their flight.

Question: Two years ago, Ken Cameron served as the first Director of Operations for Star City. How has the job changed over the past two years?

Answer: Ken Cameron, being the groundbreaker, had to work hard to figure out exactly what had to be done over here to support the astronauts in training and then to begin to establish a structure by which we could support them. All subsequent DORs have been able to come in and improve upon that structure. My predecessor, Charlie Precourt, did a really phenomenal job working with the Russian counterparts and, more precisely, determining the training flow that our astronauts needed to go through for the mission we wanted them to accomplish onboard Mir.

Question: Compare, if you will, the training for a shuttle flight here in Houston and the training the astronauts undergo in tandem with the Russian cosmonauts to prepare for a Mir mission.

Answer: The emphasis is slightly different in terms of it being a long duration mission and the fact that our astronauts are really going up on the shuttle as passengers, so to speak. When you directly compare the training flow, you won't see as much emphasis on the launch and entry aspect, but there are some striking similarities. There are some things that are essential to a training flow for a space flight. We accomplish them at the Johnson Space Center and here at the Gagarin Training Center as well.

The Russians have the equivalent of the SSTs, the single systems trainers. They have a very fine simulator for the Mir Complex and also for the Soyuz. On a daily basis, our astronauts are attending classes like they would at the Johnson Space Center. They have an opportunity to practice what they've learned in the SSTs and also in the simulators.

Question: As if all of this wasn't complicated enough, the Director of Operations in Star City will soon be overseeing both training for astronauts flying long-duration missions on the Mir and astronauts training for the initial assembly flights for the International Space Station. How will all of that work be coordinated and executed?

Answer: We just had a team of four from JSC for the last two weeks, talking with their Russian counterparts and trying to more precisely determine what the first few training flows will be for the crews of the International Space Station, so this is something we're going to be looking at very closely over the months ahead to make sure we are ready to start training. I believe the first crews will be over here in October. My summer will be busy helping people at Johnson make sure that we get the people in place in GCPC and also the supporting structure in place over here to be ready for the first training flows.

Question: Assess for me the overall progress of the Phase 1 program.

Answer: We certainly have come a long way. I think you can tell by the success that Shannon's having onboard the Mir. We've learned a lot over the past 18 months about how to work well with our Russian counterparts; the challenge in Phase 1 is to capture those lessons and pass them on to the people who are getting ready for the International Space Station training flows. I think we've made a lot of progress, and I'm going to continue to work hard, as my predecessors have done, in making sure that we continue to make progress.

Read Wendy Lawrence's Oral History (PDF)

Interview: John Uri - Week of May 10, 1996

Dr. John Uri heads up a team of scientists in the Space and Life Science Directorate who are working with Shannon Lucid. They develop experiment hardware and procedures and provide ground support for her operations on Mir.

Question: Shannon Lucid has been very busy with scientific research aboard Mir for the past seven weeks. What kind of progress has she made so far in her on orbit studies?

Answer: We're very excited by her progress. I think the research program is going extremely well. We're pretty much where we thought we would be. We've actually completed two of the experiments already, one in fundamental biology looking at egg development, and another in materials processing. Those were completed pretty much on schedule. All of her other activities are proceeding nominally, and we are expecting to start a whole new series of experiments in the Priroda module.

Question: The crew has been involved in the activation of Priroda since its arrival two weeks ago. How is that work going and what initial scientific research is planned aboard the new module?

Answer: In the Priroda module we have some facilities that we plan to use throughout the whole Phase 1 program, primarily for microgravity sciences. We have a microgravity glovebox, which is a facility for containing certain experiments. We have another facility called the MIM, Microgravity Isolation Mount, which uses magnetic levitation to isolate experiments from the Mir acceleration environment. We have other things in biotechnology that we'll be doing. And also Priroda brought up some remote sensing equipment. Those are being activated now, and we'll be looking forward to getting results back from those.

Question: What makes Priroda unique in terms of its scientific capability? What scientific value has been added to the Mir with the addition of Priroda to the complex?

Answer: As far as our program on the Mir, they are brand new. We have not been able to perform these experiments before. So with the arrival of the Priroda, we're very excited to begin that work, and most of that work will be underway this month.

Question: She is obviously very busy with her science workload. How do you keep track of how she is doing, is there some kind of report card or checklist of some sort?

Answer: Yes, we track that. We have a flight program, or a timeline if you will, that outlines all of the activities throughout her mission. During the daily communication sessions with Shannon she calls down the activities that have been completed. We keep what we call a scorecard on the activities that have been completed.

Question: Finally, when astronaut John Blaha arrives at the Mir in August, how will his scientific agenda differ from Lucid's or match the work she is conducting on the Space Station?

Answer: The answer is yes and no. Some of the experiments will be the same from Shannon's flight. In fact, they'll be the same for all the NASA/Mir missions, especially the biomedical ones, so we get a large number of subjects for those experiments. Of course the facilities in Priroda we'll be using throughout the program, but the experiments on each mission will be unique. There are some experiments on John Blaha's flight that will be completely unique to his mission.

Read more about Shuttle-Mir Science

Read John Uri's Oral History (PDF)

Interview: Richard Fullerton - Week of May 17, 1996

Richard Fullerton is the chairman of the working group that oversees spacewalk activity for the NASA/Mir cooperative program. He will monitor the upcoming spacewalks by Mir cosmonauts as they deploy cooperative solar arrays on the Kvant-1 module.

Question: The cosmonauts will be working in space for five hours Monday night during the first in this month's series of spacewalks. Why are the arrays on the Docking Module being moved to Kvant-1?

Answer: The additional arrays on the Docking Module are being moved to the Kvant-1 module to increase the power capability of the Mir, to extend its lifetime, to increase its power capability for science and normal system operation. The original arrays that are up there are degrading, reducing their power output.

Question: There are two different arrays on the Docking Module, one is a U.S./Russian cooperative array the other is a Russian solar array. The cooperative array will be moved first - why is that?

Answer: The U.S. cooperative array consists of a Russian carrier and an American designed and built solar array cell system. It's being moved first to gain experience with solar cell design that's going to be used for space station. The second array is not going to be moved until some time later. It's held in reserve to be used later when the additional arrays are degraded and need to be changed out.

Question: Last year before Atlantis arrived at Mir for the first Shuttle-Mir docking, other solar arrays were moved around the Kristall module. Is this a similar task? How delicate of an operation is it?

Answer: It's the same level of complexity as previously. It's a different location - on the Docking Module instead of Krystall. It uses the same large cargo crane manipulator device. It's a little simpler because the cooperative arrays have some enhancements compared to the previously-designed arrays, a little easier to manage.

Question: During this EVA the cosmonauts will be working around the environmental experiment packages left on the Docking Module by Linda Godwin and Rich Clifford during the last docking mission in March. What do the cosmonauts need to do during their spacewalk to keep from contaminating those packages?

Answer: The risk is very low. There are actually four packages outside that were deployed by STS-76. Three of the four are on the opposite side of the Docking Module, not near the area where the cosmonauts will be working. The fourth is protected by structures, they've been trained to avoid it, and there are crew procedures to remind them.

Question: The followup spacewalk next weekend will result in the unfurling of the cooperative array on Kvant-1. What's involved with that?

Answer: Before they can unfurl it, they'll have to connect electrical cables for telemetry and to feed power back into the Mir systems. After they have connected all the cables, they will manually crank out the 18-meter-long array.

Question: Finally, a third spacewalk at the end of this month is designed to attach experiments to the outside of the Priroda module. What will the cosmonauts face during this EVA. How complicated a procedure is it?

Answer: It's certainly no more complicated than the solar array move. It's probably a little less complicated, certainly less critical to the overall performance of Mir. Within their realm of expertise, they've done this many times before.

Read Richard Fullerton's Oral History (PDF)

Interview: Charles Brown - Week of June 7, 1996

Charles Brown is the co-chair of the Crew Training and Exchange Working Group, which negotiates all of the training agreements and arrangements between NASA and the Russian Space Agency.

Question: Distance and language would seem the most obvious challenges to overcome in coordinating the work of hundreds of people half a world apart; what factors contribute the most to the complexity of organizing this training operation?

Answer: We've come a long way since we started this task. Originally, the problems were that we had to get face-to-face to make any agreements because the communications between us and the Russians were so difficult. There were no reliable telephones or email, or anything like that.

Since then, we have established good communications, good telephones. We now have people in Russia that we can communicate with daily if we need to, just like picking up the phone to Marshall Space Flight Center, we can do that.

Question: When is the next group of cosmonauts coming to the Johnson Space Center, and what are they coming to train for?

Answer: The next group, both cosmonauts and our astronauts that are in Star City right now. They will come here in August to train for the scientific experiments that they will be doing on Mir, and also for shuttle familiarization training. In addition to that there will be some practice of transferring items from the shuttle to the Mir, so all of them together will train for about a month while they are here.

Question: Describe the prominent differences in the training received here in Houston, compared to that in Star City.

Answer: The primary difference in the way we do training - the shuttle training here is basically done with part-task trainers and full-task trainers, with crews acting through their normal scenario in the trainer. The Russians tend to use classroom much more than we do. The training we will do in August will be scientific training, some of it will be hands-on with the equipment.

Question: The training of the first crew for the International Space Station is about to get underway; will implementing that system further complicate the Phase 1 training program?

Answer: It has complicated our business to some degree. We have tried to expand our role in how we are doing Phase 1 into what we expect Phase 2 to be. In some cases, that has not really been defined yet. The Russians tend not to want to change the way we do business now, but they have agreed that we can move toward that once the agreements have been made on the space station. It is complicated because some of the agreements haven't been reached yet on the space station.

Read Charles Brown's Oral History (PDF)

Interview: Frank Culbertson - Week of July 12, 1996

Phase 1 Program Manager Frank Culbertson was interviewed on July 12, a few hours before the STS-79 launch delay decision was announced.

Lucid's space endurance record

This is something we've been looking forward to with great anticipation. Part of the purpose of the program is to gradually increase the stay of Americans in space, and the fact that Shannon is exceeding the record that Norm set we think is very significant. We're very proud of her and we think she's done a great job getting here, as well as the people supporting her.

Progress Lucid has made in her work

Shannon is doing an outstanding job. She has kept up with the program, when there have been problems she has worked them very diligently, worked very well with the ground team. The people who are supporting her have worked very hard to keep up with the program, to make sure she is supported well, and if there are problems they come up with solutions they can work on together. Shannon has a terrific attitude; she's very healthy and positive individual, and we're very proud of her.

Tasks she will perform during her mission extension

We already had a program lined out for the continuation of the American presence on Mir, which John Blaha was going to pick up in August. She will continue to do what she has been doing as well as work into some of those areas that are already onboard. Some things will have to be delayed because they were coming up on the shuttle. But she's got plenty to do, there were some aspects that were going to be moved into John's increment anyway and she will pick up on those. People right now are planning for that program.

Impact of the STS-79 delay on Lucid's supplies

As far as basic support, there's plenty of support on the Mir. We've done our own assessment and we've also talked to the Russians and they assure us that everything is fine for supporting her through September. We are reassessing what's going up on this Progress in a couple of weeks to make sure that if there's something she specifically needs that would be unique to her that we include it in this Progress. So there will probably be some special things for Shannon onboard this Progress.

Future mission scheduling impact caused by the STS-79 delay

It's most likely that it would have an impact of about an equal amount of time, five to six weeks. We are planning for that eventuality in the training and other aspects of those increments. One thing that I think people should keep in mind is the purpose of Phase 1 is to prove how we're going to work in space and to uncover the problems we'll in Phase 2. This has certainly exercised everybody up and down the line on what we might do if a shuttle were to delay.

Impact of the STS-79 launch delay on John Blaha's training

John's reason for being here is to get ready for the flight. He is reviewing shuttle procedures and shuttle safety as well as having some reviews in his science program as necessary. If he needs further review on Mir systems we can accomplish that also, but in the main we will be looking at what he needs further review on, due to the delay.

Read Frank Culbertson's Oral History (PDF)

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Mir-21 Crew News Conference - Week of July 19, 1996

During a July 19 Mir crew news conference, Shannon Lucid answered questions about her experience aboard Mir so far and commented on the prospect of spending an additional six weeks aboard the space station.

Important lessons learned

I think the most important thing you can learn from an experience like this is that the crew has to be compatible and get along and work together. I think that is the most important lesson I have learned.

The other thing that is of vital importance is that you have strong family support. My family has been supporting me all the way and is still supporting me and that has been very vital to my wellbeing and having a good time here on Mir. My kids wrote a book for me. They have a page for every day of the mission; that's a really neat idea, and I think that will work out very well.

I know my family has put together a scrapbook on the computer that has lots of pictures... They have spent a lot of time on that. On a day-to-day basis they have been sending me email letters daily, and that makes all the difference to me.

Setting an endurance record

I just hope that it's not a record that holds for very long, because I hope in a few years that quite a few Americans have the opportunity to spend a long time in space and that NASA, that America will be able to gain a lot of experience with long duration space flight. So I hope the record doesn't stand for very long.

Staying longer than planned

I'm going to stay up here a little longer and I'll be home a little bit later. And when I get home they'll be just as excited to see me and I'll be just as excited to see them as I would have been the first part of August. I think it was a good decision and I support NASA all the way with the decision that was made.

Read Shannon Lucid's Oral History (PDF)

Read about Mir-21 and NASA-2

Interview: John Uri - Week of July 19, 1996

Dr. John Uri heads up a team of scientists in the Space and Life Science Directorate who are working with Shannon Lucid. They develop experiment hardware and procedures and provide ground support for her operations on Mir.

Progress report

The science community as well as everyone involved in the program is extremely pleased with Shannon's performance to date. She is essentially on schedule with her activities. In fact, on at least one experiment she is a little bit ahead of schedule - the Candle Flame Experiment. She is very excited about that one. Since the original plan was for the mission to end the first week of August, many of the experiments have already been completed or are near completion and we are now in the process for planning for the science program for her mission extension.

Impact of six-week delay on science schedule

As far as Shannon's flight, this will give us better insurance that all the experiments will be concluded on her program, as well as some of the experiments that were planned for additional sessions should time be permitting, and now that we have the time we will be able to plan for those extra sessions as well.

As far as the future missions are concerned, since many of the hardware items and supplies are coming up on STS-79, it will be simply a six-week slip in the start of those experiments when John Blaha gets there. There is one experiment, the Greenhouse Experiment, that because it is timed for the arrival of STS-81, we had to begin that experiment with the Mir-21 crew instead of the Mir-22 crew as we had originally planned.

Which mission will be impacted more by the launch delay

If there's an impact, I like to think of it as a positive one, particularly for Shannon's flight. As I said, we'll be able to do some bonus sessions on some of the experiments and we always like to get extra science if we can get it. As far as John's flight, he is already fully trained, but with the extra six weeks on the ground we can do some additional proficiency training for him.

Additional supplies on Progress next week

As with any Progress mission, it's going to bring up food and water and supplies for the station. Shannon put in a special request for books, magazines and some specific food items. We sent that list to the Russians, and our Russian colleagues are working as hard as they can to get those items on the Progress going up next week.

Read more about Shuttle-Mir Science

Read John Uri's Oral History (PDF)

Interview: Charles Stegemoeller - Week of July 26, 1996

Charlie Stegemoeller is the Implementation Manager for the Phase 1 program. In a recent interview, he talked about the process of getting extra supplies to Mir for Shannon Lucid's extended stay.

On collaborating with the Russians

We've worked with the Russians over the past two years quite a bit on the payloads we've flown to Mir, so we have a good working relationship to start with. The Russians have an extensive history with manned space flight activities and they are used to taking care of the crew at the last minute. So they were ready to receive us and understood what we were trying to achieve by getting additional items up to Shannon.

The procedure

We knew that Shannon wouldn't have a problem staying longer on Mir. It was just a question of what could we send, and what would she want to have, so we had a conversation with the crew and got a list of items she was interested in. We passed that information on to the Russians and they accepted it and we gathered items together from the family and the flight surgeons and passed those on to Moscow. We passed them by the personnel that run the mission activity and take care of the crew. They received [the items] and were ready to process them.

Special items

She had wanted some more books to start with. Those were already taken care of in the family packages that were planned to go on this mission ahead of time. She had commented that they didn't have enough sweets on orbit, or salty items, so we packed up a good grocery bag full of stuff like what you or I would have around the house - a bag of M&Ms, some Twinkies, some cheese pretzels - items that they don't normally get because there's no snack vending machine around the corner.

Impact to Progress mission

These are last-minute additions for crew support. They aren't that large in size. The agreement we had with the Russian team was that they put them on a space in volume and mass was available for the mission, so no other critical payloads were displaced by this addition.

Read Charles Stegemoeller's Oral History (PDF)

Interview: Greg Lang - Week of August 9, 1996

Greg Lang is the lead systems integration engineer for STS-79, the upcoming space shuttle mission to Mir. In a recent interview, he talked about plans for returnable vehicles operations in conjunction with the Mir-21 crew return, the Mir-22 crew arrival, and the STS-79 docking mission.

Right now, the space station already has a returnable vehicle docked to each of its two axial ports. Before the Mir-22 crew's Soyuz can dock, a port has to be made available for it.Have the Russians worked out a plan for its surplus of on-orbit returnable vehicles?

The Russians have developed a plan involving moving the Progress to a different port prior to STS-79. One day after the Soyuz launches, on August 18, that day the Progress will be undocked from Mir and moved to a parking orbit in proximity to the Mir. The following day, August 19, the Soyuz with the new crew and the French cosmonaut will be docked to the Mir.

Approximately two weeks later the French cosmonaut and the two cosmonauts onboard with Shannon Lucid right now will come home in the Soyuz. Shortly after that, the Progress that's been in a parking orbit will be brought back in and docked to the just-vacated port on the opposite end of Mir from where it started.

How far away will the Progress be while in parking orbit? How is it controlled?

It will be controlled from the ground. We're not sure yet exactly what the distance will be. The Russian flight control team is still working out those exact details. They have done similar operations in the past with parking vehicles in proximity to space stations. It's a unusual situation, but not an unknown for them.

Why will they move the Progress to the other end of Mir from where it is now?

There are two principle reasons why they want to dock it at the opposite port. First, they want to protect the docking mechanism on the Kvant-1 module from direct solar exposure to extend its lifetime. That will also help to shade the Mir basic structure, which reduces the cooling load on the Mir, which again will help extend its lifetime.

The second reason is that at that position they can use the Progress fuel and jets to help control the mated Shuttle-Mir stack during STS-79. They could not do that if it remained docked at the port it's on now, because that would place it over the shuttle's payload bay on STS-79. Due to contamination, we really don't want those jets firing at our shuttle.

The Mir-21 crew's Soyuz will have been in space 40 days longer than originally planned. When the cosmonauts and Russian ground support check out the spacecraft's systems prior to returning to Earth, will they be looking for anything special?

I don't believe they will be looking for anything special. They will go through their standard checkout for Soyuz return. They may be more thorough in some aspects, but they have had Soyuz vehicles that have stayed on-orbit past their nominal 180-day lifetime in the past. As we do on the shuttle, they have some extra vehicle margin they can use in a situation such as this. So it's a situation they'd rather not have, but they don't see any difficulty in it.

Does that kind of checkout point to lessons NASA should be learning in anticipation of having shuttles docked to the International Space Station for extended periods of time?

Yes, there are many things we can learn from the Russians about extended stays with returnable vehicles on space stations. Right now we do not plan to have shuttle stay at either Mir or the International Space Station for longer than five or six days. We do have the capability to extend that to several weeks or more through the use of the extended duration orbiter cryogenic pallet and some modifications to the orbiter, so we know how to do that if it's required. If we do so, I'm sure we can go back and learn a lot from the Russians on what to look for after a vehicle such as the shuttle has been in orbit for a longer period.

Read more about this subject in George Sandars' Oral History (PDF)

Interview: Frank Culbertson - Week of August 16, 1996

Phase 1 Program Manager Frank Culbertson was interviewed this week, and he spoke about how the impact of crew assignment and mission scheduling will impact the Shuttle-Mir program.

How will the last-minute Russian crew assignment change impact the Mir-22 mission and the Americans who will be working with Korzun and Kaleri?

I think the impact will be minimal to the overall mission. They were trained on the science mission. John Blaha had some training time with them, but not nearly as much as with his prime crew, of course. There will be some adaptation time getting to know a new group of people, just as you would any time you change out crew members. But I think we will be able to proceed just fine with what we had planned.

What does it say about the Russian space program that they can make this kind of a change just one week before a launch?

We know they have done it fairly close [to a launch] in the past and since they're dealing with very small crews, generally only two or three, they see it as very important to have a fully trained backup ready to go. With that small a crew, the crew dynamics are very important, and if one person cannot go for some reason and you've got a long-duration mission on the line with that crew, you need to be ready to change out the entire crew. We've had discussions with them about that several times in the past.

In their role as the Mir-22 backup crew, did Korzun and Kaleri get much training on space shuttle systems or spend much time working with the STS-81 crew practicing supplies and logistics transfers?

We feel they had adequate training on the shuttle systems. They did not get a whole lot of time with the STS-81 crew, but we've found that the most beneficial interchange between the crews generally occurs in the voice conferences we have while one crew is on-orbit and the other crew is preparing to go. They generally have two or three sessions where they talk about the particulars about how they will conduct the transfers; they will have that opportunity.

French scientist Claudie Andre-Deshays is to launch with Korzun and Kaleri tomorrow for a couple of weeks of science work; will Shannon Lucid be working on the French science program during the time Andre-Deshays is onboard?

She is not going to be actually participating in the French science program. She does have some familiarization with it, and she will probably assist Claudie, since she's been there awhile, in setting up and conducting experiments. But she won't be an active participant or subject of the experiments.

Because Lucid's mission was extended, she finished her science assignments and started on some research originally slated for Mir-22. Will this have a rippling effect on future Mir science assignments?

There will be very small changes to the program. Shannon will actually continue some of the science she's done. She did begin the greenhouse experiment that was scheduled to begin with the Mir-22 crew. That will already be underway when John arrives. Otherwise, his program will be very similar to what he had originally planned.

Read Frank Culbertson's Oral History (PDF)