Mark Hess/Ed Campion                         
September 12, 1994
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
(Phone:  202/358-1778)

Janet Dean
Rockwell International, Downey, Calif.
(Phone:  310/922-5227)


RELEASE:  94-151

SHUTTLE/MIR DOCKING HARDWARE ARRIVES FROM RUSSIA


     NASA's prime contractor for Space Shuttle orbiters, Rockwell
Aerospace, took delivery Sunday of the Russian built spacecraft
docking mechanism that will enable Space Shuttle Atlantis to join up
with the orbiting Russian Mir Space Station next June.

     Rockwell procured the docking hardware a year ago from NPO
Energia for approximately $18 million, along with spare parts and
technical services to support NASA's first Shuttle mission to Mir. The
docking mechanism, called the Androgynous Peripheral Docking Assembly
(APDA) was shipped September 8 from the Energia Production Facility in
Kaliningrad, near Moscow.

     Work will begin immediately at Rockwell's Space Systems
Division (SSD) to assemble the APDA with the Rockwell-built docking
system hardware. The APDA will be mated onto a docking base that
attaches to a new external airlock designed to fit in the front of the
orbiter payload bay supported by a truss structure. The external
airlock connects with the existing airlock inside the crew cabin and
with a Spacelab module.

     In December, following integrated checkout at Rockwell, the
Shuttle/Mir docking system will be delivered to Kennedy Space Center,
Fla. There it will be installed aboard the Atlantis, which earlier
this year completed a series of modifications that will allow it to
accommodate the new docking system.

     For the STS-71 mission to the Russian Space Station, scheduled
for May 1995, Atlantis will carry a crew of five American astronauts
and two Russian cosmonauts, along with approximately 1,100 pounds of
equipment for use on Mir. 

     Two days into its flight, Atlantis will dock with Mir, whose
crew of two cosmonauts and NASA astronaut Norm Thagard will have been
aboard for 90 days following an earlier launch in a Russian Soyuz-TM
capsule.  The Atlantis and Mir crews will conduct five days of joint
medical research on the physiological effects of extended space
flight.  The original Mir crew, including Thagard, will then join the
Atlantis' astronauts for the trip back to Earth, while the two new
cosmonauts will remain aboard for a long duration stay.


     The STS-71 mission is the first of seven to ten Space Shuttle
missions to Mir that are planned under a cooperative agreement between
NASA and the Russian Space Agency (RSA). A $400 million contract
recently signed by the agencies provides funding to Russia for
activities under the protocol to the Human Space Flight Agreement
which was signed in December 1993.  The contract
provides for Russian hardware, services and data in support of a joint
program involving the U.S. Space Shuttle and the Russia's Mir Space
Station and selected requirements for the International Space Station.

     Rockwell SSD is prime contractor to NASA for Space Shuttle
orbiters. The company also is under contract to NASA for support to
the Shuttle/Mir missions. NPO Energia is an advanced technology
organization responsible for the design and manufacture of the Energia
launch vehicle and manned systems including the Soyuz-TM and
Progress-M spacecraft, the Mir Space Station and the Buran Space
Shuttle. Energia originally developed the APDA for Buran/Mir missions.
Rockwell and Energia provided docking hardware for the Apollo/Soyuz
Test Project in July 1975.


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