Astronaut Bill Shepherd plunges from a mockup Soyuz spacecraft

97-10688 (October 3, 1997) --- Astronaut Bill Shepherd, commander of the first International Space Station crew, plunges from a mockup Soyuz spacecraft descent module into the Black Sea recently during water survival training. Along with fellow crew members cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko, Soyuz commander, and Sergei Krikalev, flight engineer, Shepherd will launch to the new station in January 1999 aboard a Soyuz spacecraft.