| STS-86 | Crew | Payload | Mission | Joint Effort |
STS-86
Space Shuttle Atlantis
Launched:
September 25, 1997, 10:34 a.m. EDT
Kennedy Space Center, Pad 39-A
Orbit:
184 nautical milesInclination:
51.6 degreesLanded:
October 6, 1997 at 5:55 p.m. EDT Kennedy Space CenterMission:
10 days, 19 hours, 22 minutes
STS-86
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| STS-86 | Crew | Payload | Mission | Joint Effort |
STS-86 Crew
Commander James D. Wetherbee
Fourth Shuttle flightPilot Michael J. Bloomfield
First Shuttle flightMission Specialist Scott E. Parazynski, M.D.
Second Shuttle flightMission Specialist Wendy B. Lawrence
Second Shuttle flightCosmonaut Vladimir G. Titov
Russian Space Agency
Fifth spaceflightMission Specialist Jean-Loup Chrétien
French Space Agency
Third spaceflightMission Specialist David A. Wolf, M.D.
Second Shuttle flight, remaining on MirMission Specialist C. Michael Foale, Ph.D.
Fifth Shuttle flight; returning from Mir
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| STS-86 | Crew | Payload | Mission | Joint Effort |
Payload
Space Habitation (Double) Module
Mir Environmental Effects Payload
Extravehicular Activity Development Flight Test
Seeds in Space Education Activity
KidSat Educational Activity
Cosmic Radiation Effects and Activation Monitor
Cell Culture Module-A Experiment
Shuttle Ionospheric Modification with Pulsed Local Exhaust
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| STS-86 | Crew | Payload | Mission | Joint Effort|
Mission: September 25 - October 6, 1997
By STS-86, the Space Shuttle had proven itself as a reliable "space truck" that was capable of heavy-hauling supplies to a distant, rapidly moving address and then precision-parking to make a delivery in orbit.
However, after Jerry Linengers fire experience aboard Mir and Mike Foales close call with the Progress collision, most of the publics attention was not on the Shuttles capabilities but, rather, on whether it was safe to send astronaut David Wolf to take Mike Foales place. Congressman James Sensenbrenner wrote that he did not expect that the next mission would succeed "without a potentially life-threatening situation." After a review, NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin decided to press onand the STS-86 crew delivered Wolf to begin a successful mission on Mir.
Atlantis was literally loaded with Shuttle-Mir experience. Commander Jim Wetherbee had led the "near Mir" mission of STS-63. Mission Specialistand Mir veteranVladimir Titov had been the backup to Sergei Krikalev for STS-60 and had been aboard with Wetherbee on STS-63. French astronaut Jean-Loup Chrétien had already flown on Mir. David Wolf had been trained for Mir by the Russians, as had Scott Parazynski and Wendy Lawrence. Earlier in the Program, Parazynski had been found to be too tall to fit safely in the Soyuz escape capsule, and Lawrence was deemed too short for the Russian Orlan extravehicular activity suit. Indeed, this flight was especially poignant for Lawrence as she had originally been slated to replace Foale and Wolf had been her backup. (Wendy Lawrence would get to fly to Mir again to help close out the program with STS-91.)
STS-86 was Atlantis last trip to Mir. Scheduled as another nighttime launch, the mission experienced a normal countdown; but about one minute into flight, a fuel cell behaved erratically. After Shuttle separation from the external tank, a thruster malfunctioned. In all, however, Atlantis and its systems performed very well throughout the flight; the chase, rendezvous, and docking proceeded normally.
Since the Mir space station had been having troublelosing attitude control and drifting into slow tumblethe STS-86 crew had trained until almost the last minute, practicing simulations of various docking situations. The crew was also bringing up to Mir a new attitude control computer. The timeline called for giving it to Mir Commander Anatoly Solovyev on the second day of docked operations. But, according to Wetherbee, "Anatoly told us, No, I dont want to wait til the second day. I want you to give me that computer as soon as we have the handshake ceremony. So, I decided to go him one better to give it to him during the handshake ceremony. Titov went down and drew a happy face on the outside of this box, and [then] we opened up the hatch. I shook hands with [Solovyev] with one hand, and with the other hand, I gave him his attitude control computer . Then, each of the other crewmembers gave him this big, huge bucket of water that we bring up for them to use."
Besides ferrying supplies and equipment, and bringing David Wolf to replace Mike Foale, one main activity of STS-86 was a five-hour spacewalk by Parazynski and Titov to test tools and techniques for future construction of the International Space Station. Their plans included the retrieval of experiment packages that had been mounted on the docking module during STS-76.
After undocking, Pilot Mike Bloomfield flew Atlantis to a point 600 feet beneath and in front of the Russian station to gather data from a European Space Agency navigation sensor in the Shuttles cargo bay. Bloomfield then brought Atlantis back to a point just 240 feet from Mir where he began a fly-around of the station.
Onboard Mir, Commander Solovyev opened a pressure valve in the stations node, blowing air into the depressurized Spektr module. Mission Specialist Titov, aboard Atlantis, and Flight Engineer Pavel Vinogradov, aboard Mir, both reported seeing particles seeping from the base of the damaged solar array on Spektr, but not enough to identify the exact location for a hull breach resulting from the June 25, 1997, Progress collision.
After two "wave-offs" due to weather conditions, the Space Shuttle Atlantis glided to a smooth landing at Kennedy Space Center and returned astronaut Mike Foale to Earth after his 145 days in space.
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| STS-86 | Crew | Payload | Mission | Joint Effort |
Joint Effort
For the third time in 1997, a U.S. astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut walked and worked together in space while the Atlantis-Mir space complex orbited the Earth in flawless fashion.
Astronaut Scott Parazynski and his Atlantis crewmate, Russian cosmonaut Vladimir Titov, spent five hours and one minute in the Shuttles cargo bay and at the docking module itself, collecting four suitcase-size packages called Mir Environmental Effects Payloads (MEEPs) that astronauts Linda Godwin and Rich Clifford had left outside Mir during STS-76, 18 months earlier.
Parazynski (photo, left) and Titov (right) also attached a 121-pound instrument called a solar array cap to the docking module for future use by Russian cosmonauts to seal off a suspected breach in the hull of the Spektr module. The two spacewalkers wrapped up their work outside Atlantis by testing the extravehicular activity rescue jetpacks. These jetpacks were designed to propel astronauts back to safety in the Shuttles payload bay if the astronauts become untethered while performing an extravehicular activity.
This was Parazynskis first spacewalk and the fourth spacewalk for the veteran Titov, who had conducted three other spacewalks as a Mir commander in 1988. Also, it was the first time a non-American conducted an extravehicular activity from a U.S. spacecraft.