Mir-22 Weekly Reports

Mir-22 - Week of August 30, 1996

Mission Status Report - Filed from Mir Mission Control in Moscow

The transition of crewmembers onboard the Russian Space Station Mir is all but complete, as three of the six inhabitants of that orbiting outpost make final preparations to return to Earth monday, while American astronaut Shannon Lucid heads into the final few weeks of her six month tour of duty there. On her 159th day aboard the Mir station and 161st in space, Lucid is more than five months into a mission now scheduled to end in three weeks' time.

On Monday Lucid and her five crewmates conducted a news conference on orbit, and she was asked what about her "home away from home" she will miss when her mission ends next month.

"I will miss not getting to work in a laboratory every day," she said. "It's really been a lot of fun to more or less have my own laboratory that I was in charge of in making decisions, and just working in a lab every day."

Lucid's ride home, the space shuttle Atlantis, is now scheduled to launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on September 14 at 4:39 a.m. Central Time, on the STS-79 mission which will bring astronaut John Blaha to the Mir for a four-month mission. The launch date was set by NASA managers after a lengthy Flight Readiness Review at KSC.

NASA officials will be keeping tabs on tropical storm activity in the Atlantic and keeping their fingers crossed that Mother Nature will not disrupt plans for Atlantis' launch.

Blaha will spend most of his four-month mission on the station with the Mir-22 cosmonauts, commander Valeri Korzun and flight engineer Alexander Kaleri. Their arrival on the station 12 days ago came only a week after they were elevated from their status as the back-up crew, after the Mir-22 prime crew commander was grounded for medical reasons, and along with him his flight engineer. Although Korzun and Kaleri did not have an extensive training regimen with Blaha, Korzun says he is eager to work with the veteran American astronaut.

"We did survival training with him, along with the rest of the crew. We know each other fairly well as colleagues, as friends. I think the presence of such an astronaut as John Blaha onboard Mir, someone with his experience as a pilot and commander... we will work together with him with great pleasure fulfilling the program, and I don't see any problems in our joint work together."

Likewise, during a shuttle crew news conference last week, Blaha acknowledged having had less time to get to know Korzun and Kaleri than he would have had in a normal training routine; nevertheless, he's set to get to orbit and get to work.

"I ended up training with two different crews in Russia, and now I'm going to fly with a third crew that I didn't train with. I met both of these two people a year and a half ago in Star City, I've seen them a little bit around the campus, talked to them extensively down in Baikonur last week on a trip there, and I'm looking forward to working with them. They're an experienced crew and we have a full plate.

"We'll have some space walks. During those space walks I'll have some duties inside the Mir, maneuvering the solar panels and maneuvering the vehicle when people tell me to. I'm a foreigner onboard that vehicle so basically I don't do too much unless someone tells me to do it."

Korzun, Kaleri and Lucid will be on hand to greet Blaha and his shuttle crewmates when Atlantis docks to the Mir about 43 hours after its launch, but the other three cosmonauts are due to come home this weekend. Mir-21 commander Yuri Onufriyenko and flight engineer Yury Usachev are in their 189th day onboard the Mir, their 191st in space. In the early morning hours of Monday, Moscow time, they and French astronaut Claudie Andre-Deshays, who arrived on the Mir with Korzun and Kaleri, will climb into the Soyuz capsule which brought Onufriyenko and Usachev to the Mir in February. They will undock from the Mir and return to Earth, ending the Russians' six months in space and Andre-Deshays' 16-day mission.

The Atlantis astronauts spent most of this past week at KSC participating in the dress rehearsal of the final phase of the countdown for their mission, and they have now returned to Houston for the final phase of their mission training.

Also at JSC this past week were astronauts Jerry Linenger and Mike Foale, the next in line behind John Blaha for a tour of duty on the Mir Space Station. Both have been in Houston for an update on their shuttle systems training, before returning to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, outside Moscow, where they will resume their Mir training.

Meanwhile, eight Russian cosmonauts who will be on the Mir during upcoming shuttle visits have also been in Houston this week. The Mir-23 cosmonauts, commander Vasily Tsibliev and flight engineer Aleksandr Lazutkin, have been at JSC for three weeks learning space shuttle systems; for the past two weeks they have been joined by the Mir-25 cosmonauts, commander Talgat Musabayev and flight engineer Nikolai Budarin.

This week, they were all joined by both the prime crew for Mir-24, commander Yuri Gidzenko and flight engineer Pavel Vinogradov, and the Mir-24 back-up team of commander Gennadi Padalka and flight engineer Sergei Avdeyev. Gidzenko and Avdeyev flew together on Mir 20, and were onboard late last year when Atlantis delivered the docking module to the station on mission STS-74. Vinogradov was the flight engineer for Mir-22, and would be in orbit today but was grounded when commander Gennadi Manakov was pulled from the flight because of a suspect electrocardiograph reading.

A ninth Russian cosmonaut has been at JSC this week, but she will remain when the others go home. Elena Kondakova, the current record holder for longest single spaceflight by a woman at 169 days, was recently named to fly on the shuttle as a mission specialist when Atlantis ventures to the Mir next may on STS-84. Kondakova has been settling in here in houston and taking English lessons in the early phase of her training.

Tomorrow and Sunday, Mir-21 commander Yuri Onufriyenko and flight engineer Yury Usachev will complete their handover of station operational duties to their Mir-22 counterparts, Valeri Korzun and Alexander Kaleri, and will finish packing up their gear as they complete their six-month mission.

Late Sunday night, Houston time, CNES researcher Claudie Andre-Deshays will join Onufriyenko and Usachev in their Soyuz capsule, and at 11:20 p-m, they will undock from the Mir station to begin a 3.5-hour trip back to earth. They are scheduled to make a soft landing in central Asia at 2:45 a.m. Houston time Monday morning.

Tuesday morning, about 4:30 Central Time, the Progress resupply vehicle, which has been orbiting near the Mir station since the arrival of the Mir-22 crew, will redock to the station, using the docking port vacated by the Mir-21 crew's Soyuz capsule.

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Mir-22 - Week of September 6, 1996

Mission Status Report - Filed from Mir Mission Control in Moscow

WISH-TV Interview - TV interview with Shannon Lucid

Elena Kondakova - An interview with the previous woman-in-space recordholder

Shannon Lucid's trailblazing mission on the space station Mir is about to add another record to its list of accomplishments. Today the veteran American astronaut completes 24 full weeks in space, and her 168th day onboard the Russian outpost. Tomorrow, her 169th day in space, she becomes the holder of the record for longest single spaceflight by a woman, passing the mark set by cosmonaut Elena Kondakova in 1995.

Lucid's tour of duty on the Mir was originally planned as a four-and-a-half-month mission, but it was extended six weeks by a postponement of the planned July launch of Atlantis on mission STS-79, in order to replace the shuttle's solid rocket boosters. This week Atlantis' launch was delayed again; Wednesday morning the orbiter was rolled back from launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center to the Vehicle Assembly Building to protect the orbiter from the possible effects of Hurricane Fran, which was bearing down on the southeastern United States.

But with the storm turning north of the Florida spaceport, Atlantis was moved back to the pad yesterday. A revised launch date of September 16 has been set, with launch at 3:54 a.m. Central time, and docking to the Mir on the night of September 18.

In an interview with WISH-TV in Indianapolis yesterday, Lucid said she will be ready to come home whenever Atlantis arrives, and she has every confidence in the actions taken by NASA officials at KSC.

"As long as Atlantis is in good shape then I'm in good shape, and when they get here, they get here," she said. .

The extension of Lucid's time on orbit has allowed her to conduct additional science to learn more about how the human body reacts to long periods in microgravity. And while she says work does take up most of her day, she notes that being on the Mir an extra six weeks has given her the unexpected opportunity to observe seasonal changes here on Earth.

"One of the really neat things about having a long flight is that I've been able to see the seasons' changes over the Earth. The sort of flights I've been on before on the shuttle, I was only up for a week or two weeks, and didn't really get to see how the Earth changed over a period of time. I was just thinking today that, when I launched in March, when I looked out at the northern part of our Earth, it was covered with snow and ice, and I got to see the ice in all the lakes break up and then I got to see the Earth green. It was a very neat experience."

This past week Lucid also experienced a change in crewmates. On August 19 Lucid and her Mir-21 colleagues were joined on the station by Mir-22 commander Valeri Korzun, flight engineer Alexander Kaleri, and French astronaut Claudie Andre-Deshays. The changeover in the Russian crew was completed Monday, when after 192 days onboard the Mir, all but a month of it with Lucid as their on-orbit colleague, Mir-21 commander Yuri Onufriyenko and flight engineer Yury Usachev ended their mission and returned to Earth, along with Andre-Deshays.

In the Soyuz capsule which brought Onufriyenko and Usachev to the Mir in February, they undocked from the station, and made a soft landing some three hours later in central Asia. Russian Space Agency officials say all three are in good shape and quickly re-adapting to the power of gravity. Onufriyenko and Usachev spent 194 days in space; Andre-Deshays, 17.

That two and a half weeks on orbit for the first-time French space flyer is one-tenth the time spent in space by Elena Kondakova, an engineer with RSC Energia who spent five and a half months onboard the Mir in 1994 and 1995 as flight engineer for the Mir 17 crew. She will make her second trip to space--a much shorter one--when she flies as a mission specialist on the shuttle Atlantis' sixth Mir docking mission, targeted for next May. She is in Houston to begin her shuttle training. In a recent interview she was asked about her job aboard Atlantis.

"My program is in development at this time. During our flight, we will test new equipment for rendezvous with the Mir station and I will also play a certain role in this program. When we're closer to the flight, I will understand what specifically I am going to do. I am very happy that I am going to participate in such a wonderful flight."

As Kondakova gets settled in here in Houston, several of her colleagues are wrapping up their latest round of shuttle training and heading home this weekend. The eight cosmonauts who will make up the next four Mir crews have been here at the Johnson Space Center the past few weeks for instruction on the space shuttle and its systems, training they will put to use on the Russian station when the shuttle arrives to ferry supplies and change out the American astronauts working there.

John Blaha, who will succeed Lucid on orbit later this month, has been with his STS-79 crewmates here in Houston undergoing physical examinations and seeing to final details before he and his colleagues leave for the Kennedy Space Center next Friday for final pre-launch preparations.

The two Americans slated to follow Blaha onboard the Mir, Jerry Linenger and Mike Foale, are finishing up a stretch of shuttle training here in Houston, before returning to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, outside Moscow. Next week both will have test runs in JSC's weightless environment training facility using the Russian EVA suit. Linenger will make a spacewalk as part of the Mir-23 crew, and Foale will conduct a spacewalk as an STS-86 crewmember after he's replaced on the Mir by astronaut Wendy Lawrence.

This weekend Korzun, Kaleri and Lucid will continue with the on-going Earth observation work of their mission, but they will also enjoy some off-duty time to rest and prepare for the coming week.

The work of the week includes Lucid packing up more of her equipment and experiment samples coming back to Earth with her, and pressing ahead with sampling of the wheat plants growing in the greenhouse experiment to learn about how to grow food in space.

The countdown for the September 16 launch of Atlantis to the Mir begins next Friday morning, shortly before the arrival of commander Bill Readdy and his five-man crew at the Kennedy Space Center.

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Mir-22 - Week of September 13, 1996

Mission Status Report - Filed from Mir Mission Control in Moscow

As Cosmonaut Researcher Shannon Lucid neared the end of her six months of scientific research last week, NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin called to congratulate her on her record-setting female flight.

"This is really an incredible achievement," Goldin said. "We are proud of you because of who you are and what you've accomplished and the strength you've shown in adversity."

"On a long duration flight, the type of things we're going to see on the International Space Station, there are going to be many things that are going to happen, and there are going to be difficulties," Goldin said. "Your enthusiasm and the way you have been able to take small setbacks in stride inspires everyone here down on Earth."

Lucid's flight has been a training experience for all of those who support and will support such long duration missions, including NASA's Russian partners, and both Lucid and Goldin took time Saturday to thank and congratulate the ground crews.

Lucid's flight aboard Mir will end next week when STS-79 arrives with her replacement -- Astronaut John Blaha -- on Wednesday. During the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test, Blaha said he was excited to be a part of a mission that will be the first to conduct a crew exchange on orbit.

"I think what we are about to do here is pretty exciting. We are really into the space station era right now and I personally think that is fantastic," Blaha said. "A crew exchange in orbit, when you think about it, is incredible, and this is the first crew that is going to do that. I think everybody in our country also is proud because this space program continues to move forward and discover new ground."

STS-79 also will bring with it a new supply of nitrogen unexpectedly needed aboard Mir, indicating the growing maturity of the joint U.S., Russian partnership by once again demonstrating its ability to improvise, collaborate and react quickly to handle space station issues.

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Mir-22 - Week of September 20, 1996

The Space Shuttle Atlantis was poised to dock with the Mir Space Station late Wednesday as Astronaut Shannon Lucid wrapped up her preparations for a return to Earth after six months on the Russian outpost.

Atlantis left Launch Pad 39A at 3:54 a.m. CDT beginning a 10-day mission for the first exchange of American astronauts in space. Commander Bill Readdy and Pilot Terry Wilcutt began rendezvous burns late Monday that positioned the orbiter to link up with the Russian station.

Apt and Walz also helped Mission Specialists Tom Akers and John Blaha pack some of the 4,600 pounds of food, equipment, water, clothing and other supplies that will be transferred once Atlantis is docked to the Russian station.

Atlantis docked with Mir at 10:13 p.m. Wednesday and the crew opened the hatch about two hours later. After crew welcoming ceremonies were completed, Mission Specialist John Blaha became part of the Mir-22 crew as Lucid became part of Atlantis' crew.

Before launch, Blaha explained the procedure: "The first thing we do after the greeting ceremony is I take my survival equipment, my Russian space suit and all of my personal equipment on to the Mir. We put my equipment into the Soyuz capsule and we take Shannon's out and right after that transfer of equipment, that's when I become part of the Mir crew and Shannon becomes part of the shuttle crew."

Both crews have settled in for five days of joint science operations in the Spacehab module. The module, redesigned for this flight to provide more science investigation space, is nestled in Atlantis' cargo bay and will serve as a microgravity laboratory for the crew members.

Meanwhile, on the Mir Space Station, Lucid with her Mir-22 crew mates, Commander Valeri Korzun and Flight Engineer Alexander Kaleri, have filled bags with experiment equipment, computer and optical discs, videotapes, air, water, biological and materials processing experiment samples. All the bags will be transferred to Atlantis.

"We finished up most of the science and we're all packed up now and we're waiting for the 79 crew to show up," Lucid said last week. "One of the first things I want to do when I return home is I want to go up to the bookstore and see what new books have been published in the last six months and just browse the bookstore for a long period of time. And I'm looking forward to getting out on my bicycle and riding and feeling the wind in your face and the sun on your back. And I'm also looking forward to getting on my rollerblades and going rollerblading with my daughters."

The Mir crew reviewed preparations for the arrival of Atlantis with Blaha and the STS-79 crew in Houston via a special videconferencing linkup last week.

"I sent John a note and told him just to relax and just to enjoy his time up here ... just not get bogged down in the details," Lucid said. "Just come on up, relax, take each day as it comes and enjoy each day, and he'll have a great time."

The crew also watched the hurricane activity in the Atlantic and Pacific.

"They look like the pictures you see of hurricanes," Lucid said "You know, great big white clouds swirling around. It's really pretty interesting to watch them, but as you look at them from up here, it's sort of hard to believe that they carry that much devastation within them, you know, on the other side of them. Because, we're looking down on top and it's just sort of an even circular white cloud and it's just hard to comprehend the misery and devastation that they're bringing to the people whose lives are touched down there on the Earth."

Lucid worked last week with the dwarf wheat plants that have been growing and storing them for study by ground scientists. The wheat has been growing in the Russian-developed Greenhouse facility for a month, and are almost eight inches tall. This is the second set of samples Lucid has cultivated. Blaha will continue the investigation during his stay on Mir.

"The wheat is still growing and it's still looking pretty good and its going to be here ready for John to take over," she said. "We're just sort of going to hand it over in the middle."

Once docking operations are complete Atlantis will undock with Mir at 8:31 p.m. Monday and bring Lucid home. Atlantis will return to KSC's Shuttle Landing Facility at 7:12 a.m. Thursday. An on-time landing of Atlantis will mark the end of a 188-day mission in space for Lucid.

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Mir-22 - Week of September 27, 1996

Mission Status Report - Filed from Mir Mission Control in Moscow

With Shannon Lucid safely aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis and fellow American John Blaha settling in on Mir, the crew of STS-79 broke formation with the Russian space station Monday and headed for home.

Lucid's six-month stay in orbit, which included 179 days on Mir, ended Thursday at 188 days and established her as the American space flight duration record holder and the world's female record holder.

"Do svidaniya," or goodbye in Russian, were Lucid's last words to her Mir-22 crewmates and her astronaut replacement.

"You look great, we'll see you later," Blaha radioed back from Mir.

Lucid was expected to feel weak, nauseous, tired and heavier than normal after returning to Earth's gravity, said Dr. Roger Billica, JSC's chief of medical operations. Doctors planned a full battery of tests immediately after landing and continuous monitoring of her health for some time, Billica said, but added that they aim to get her home with her family as soon as possible. She said in on-orbit interviews that she is looking forward to cleaning up, sampling some "gooey treats" and sitting in her favorite chair and talking with her family.

"I haven't had a shower since March 22nd," she said "The guys say I don't smell too bad." Landing was scheduled for 7:12 a.m. CDT Thursday at Kennedy Space Center, but because one of the shuttle's three auxiliary power units failed shortly after Atlantis reached orbit mission managers were watching weather conditions even more closely than usual and were ready to land at Edwards Air Force Base if necessary. Landing weather rules were tightened because of the failure in the triply redundant system that provides hydraulic power to the aerosurfaces used to guide the space plane through the atmosphere.

Last Wednesday's rendezvous and docking went flawlessly, and within hours of the hatch opening, Blaha and Lucid had formally swapped places aboard Mir. Blaha is scheduled to remain on Mir for four months, or until STS-81 crew member Jerry Linenger arrives to replace him. "What this mission is about is ends and beginnings, and conflicting emotions that affect all of us here," STS-79 Commander Bill Readdy said before undocking. "'Beginnings' because it begins John's flight ... and 'endings' because it ends Shannon's record-setting flight, six months on orbit.

"We'd obviously like to stay. Every time we go past a window and see the Mir, it's an awesome sight. Every time we float down one of the passageways into the hatch and see one of our Russian colleagues working together with a member of our crew, it's a joy to behold."

Readdy flew the orbiter manually through the final 2,000 feet and finished the docking at 10:17 p.m. Wednesday, within seconds of the pre-planned time. Soon after the crew members completed their welcoming ceremony, they went to work, hauling bags of water and other supplies from the shuttle's Spacehab module into the Mir. More than 4,000 pounds of equipment and logistical supplies were transferred to Mir, and another 2,000 pounds of experiment samples were being returned to Earth for waiting scientists via Atlantis.

Among the equipment transferred were three full experiments, the Biotechnology System, the Material in Devices as Superconductors and the Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus. Readdy and Pilot Terry Wilcutt released the hooks and latches holding Atlantis to Mir at 8:33 p.m. CDT Monday, ending the five days of docked operations. After performing a tail-forward fly-around of the Russian outpost at a distance of about 400 feet, they fired the shuttle's maneuvering jets to separate the two vehicles until Atlantis return in January for the fifth Shuttle-Mir docking. Ready told flight controllers at JSC that it was "kind of sad" to be leaving Mir behind.

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Mir-22 - Week October 4, 1996

Mission Status Report - Filed from Mir Mission Control in Moscow

The ongoing mission of American astronauts onboard the Russian Space Station Mir is more than two weeks into its current phase, as veteran astronaut John Blaha settles in to his new home on orbit and pursues a scientific program to learn more about how the human body responds to extended periods in the absence of gravity.

During his first solo interview of the mission, Blaha praised his new home on orbit and noted that there's a lot more space onboard since the STS-79 crew undocked early last week.

"I look at it as a big house with many different rooms in it, so there's all sorts of room to move around in. You can run up to the Kvant II module like I did this morning, and I looked down and saw Chicago and West Lafayette, Indiana and Indianopolis – I was specifically looking at West Lafayette because that is where my daughter is going to college at Purdue."

Blaha also said that because of his work and getting news from his family and from amateur radio operators on the Earth, he hasn't had time to be homesick.

"The number one thing I miss is my wife and my family. I like seeing them and talking with them, so I miss that. But I can talk with them through the email and we've had some family contacts during the mission. And the one thing I can't get though, I missed the Dallas Cowboy game on Monday night football and I missed the Yankee game against Texas Rangers last night, but I heard about the results of it from HAM operators in the United States."

John Blaha's predecessor onboard the Mir, astronaut Shannon Lucid, ended her record-setting 188-day mission when the space shuttle Atlantis landed at the Kennedy Space Center September 26. Back in Houston now, she has been spending her time in psychological and physiological debriefings with flight surgeons at the Johnson Space Center, as well as beginning her program of physical therapy to restore her body to its pre-flight condition. Of the 188 days Lucid spent in space, 179 were onboard the Russian space station as a Mir crewmember.

The astronauts who will follow Blaha to the Mir are in various stages of their training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, outside Moscow. Succeeding Blaha will be astronaut Jerry Linenger, who will launch on the shuttle Atlantis in January. Linenger's replacement, Mike Foale, is to head for the Mir on mission STS-84 in mid-May 1997. He will be relieved onboard the Russian station by astronaut Wendy Lawrence, who is slated to begin her tour of duty next September. She will remain onboard for four months, until the arrival of astronaut David Wolf on the shuttle Discovery in January 1998.

Also training in Star City is astronaut Jim Voss, who is preparing to be a back-up should one be required.

As Lawrence begins training as a Mir crewmember, she is also busy briefing her successor. Astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria is taking over from Lawrence as NASA's Director of Operations, Star City, Russia. In that job, Lopez-Alegria is the main link between NASA and the Russian management in Star City, coordinating all operations involving the Russians and NASA personnel.

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Mir-22 - Week of October 11, 1996

Mission Status Report - Filed from Mir Mission Control in Moscow

Interview with John Blaha - The guest cosmonaut-researcher talks with National Public Radio

Interview with Bill Shepherd - The commander of International Space Station's first residency mission talks about the challenges of this major multinational project

Astronaut John Blaha is into the fourth week of his four-month tour of duty on the Russian space station Mir, extending a permanent American presence in space and pursuing a scientific agenda to learn more about how the human body responds to long periods in microgravity.

Today is Blaha's 25th day in space since his launch last month on the space shuttle Atlantis, his 22nd as a member of the Mir-22 crew. Combined with astronaut Shannon Lucid's 179 days on the Mir, Americans have now been living and working onboard the orbiting Russian outpost for 201 days in a row. Blaha's crewmates, commander Valeri Korzun and flight engineer Alexander Kaleri, have been in space eight weeks, 54 days onboard the Mir.

This week, all three have been busy with a variety of on-board investigations, including a weekly survey of their personal interaction so scientists on the ground can study changes in attitudes and leadership roles during a long spaceflight. Blaha also completed replacement of the suspension media in the Biotechnology System, an apparatus for the growth and maintenance of cartilage cells to investigate long-term cell growth on orbit, and he finished the first five sample growths in the Binary Colloid Alloy Test, which studies the long-term behavior of crystal alloys made from materials which don't normally combine with one another.

Earlier this week Blaha conducted an interview with anchor Bob Edwards of National Public Radio. The veteran astronaut began by providing an outline of his typical day on orbit.

"Well, I've been very busy. Typical day: get up at 7 a.m., start working at 8, and stop around 10 p.m. to 11 p.m., and maybe get to bed by 1 or 2 a.m. And then in the middle of that day, about an hour to an hour and half, twice a day, of physical exercise--once on the treadmill, and once on the bicycle, and in between using expanders to work with the muscles. And when I'm not eating and doing those types of things, we're conducting an awful lot of experiments - both human physiology experiments, life science and microbiology, and materials science experiments...quite a number of them."

Blaha is scheduled to remain on the Mir until Atlantis returns on mission STS-81 in january, when he'll be relieved by astronaut Jerry Linenger. Linenger is in the final phases of his Mir training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, outside Moscow.

Linenger's successor on the Mir, astronaut Mike Foale, continued his training in Star City this week as well, and he was also fitted for his Russian spacesuits.

Astronauts Wendy Lawrence, slated to go to the Mir next September, and David Wolf, who will follow her in January 1998, are in the early stages of their studies on Mir systems and are also concentrating on their Russian language skills.

Rounding out the Star City contingent is astronaut Jim Voss, in training as a back-up to the other Americans in line to continue the joint U.S.-Russian mission onboard the Mir.

The Shuttle-Mir program is preparing the United States, Russia, and nearly a dozen other countries for the assembly and occupancy of the International Space Station. The first component of that station is to be launched into orbit in November of next year, and the first crew to live on the station is scheduled to launch in May 1998. U.S. astronaut Bill Shepherd is part of that three-man crew, which will include veteran Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Solovyev and Sergei Krikalev. This week, as he prepared to leave for Russia for training for that mission, Shepherd talked about the goals of the expedition and his thoughts about taking this next step into space.

"I think that since the last and final redesign the progress of the program has been good. We are on schedule and we're going to meet our other commitments, but clearly this is a program of such magnitude that it takes more than a decade to go from concept to reality. We forget that technical developments take this long, and we need to do these things in a consistent fashion, with good technical, managerial, and political support. That's been the biggest issue."

This weekend Korzun, Kaleri and Blaha have off-duty time scheduled, to relax from their work of the past week, and they are scheduled for more Earth observation work as weather conditions permit. During the week Blaha will continue his microgravity science research with the Binary Colloid Alloy Test, and the growth of mature cartilage cells in the Biotechnology System apparatus.

| 8/30/96 | 9/6/96 | 9/13/96 | 9/20/96 | 9/27/96 | 10/4/96 | 10/11/96 | 10/18/96 |
| 10/25/96 | 11/1/96 | 11/8/96 | 11/15/96 | 11/22/96 | 12/6/96 | 12/13/96 | 12/20/96 |
| 1/3/97 | 1/10/97 | 1/24/97 | 2/7/97 | 2/14/97 | 2/21/97 |

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Mir-22 - Week of October 18, 1996

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Mir-22 - Week of October 25, 1996

Mission Status Report - Filed from Mir Mission Control in Moscow

Mir-22 Crew News Conference - The current Mir crew answers questions from orbit

Astronaut John Blaha has begun his second month onboard the space station Mir, furthering a permanent American presence in space while pursuing an agenda of scientific experiments to improve the understanding of how people respond to long periods in the absence of gravity. Today is Blaha's 39th day in space, his 36th as a member of the Mir-22 crew. For his crewmates, Mir commander Valeri Korzun and flight engineer Alexander Kalery, today marks 69 days since their launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakstan, and their 67th onboard the station.

Yesterday the three space travelers took time to answer questions about their cooperative mission from reporters at several NASA centers. Blaha spoke glowingly of his crewmates, the Mir, and the first five weeks of his four-month mission.

"I'd heard a lot about the Mir," Blaha said. "This is an incredible space station. I am very impressed with it, I'm very impressed with Valery and Sasha, the work they do here. I wish I could keep up with them."

Korzun complimented the teamwork shown by his three-man crew.

"John Blaha is an excellent person, a good specialist, an outstanding astronaut, a wonderful investigator, so we have no problems with our crew, neither with the Russian or American sides."

On his four space shuttle missions, Blaha spent a total of 33 days in space. Now 39 days into this mission, he says he's learned that longer flights give a new perspective to on-orbit science.

"From a scientific viewpoint, when you see crystals growing here in microgravity, it's just incredible. I think it's a shame we can't beam up lots of smart people who understand physics, chemistry, fluid dynamics so they can rapidly expand their knowledge of those particular physical and chemical processes. Of course that's what all the science research is about."

Blaha's launch on mission STS-79 last month came after news of the discovery of evidence that there may once have been life on the planet Mars; he was asked if that knowledge has him looking at Mars differently now.

"Once a day," he said, "I take some time to go on a dark pass to look at the planets. I've seen Mars, Saturn, the moons of Jupiter, Jupiter, and Venus, and every time I look at Mars I say 'we ought to go, we ought to go.' Without a doubt, that kind of program is good for mankind, good for all the countries on the Earth to work together. I think we ought to go - I wish we were on our way right now, but I guess that will have to be younger people in the future."

Meanwhile, the astronaut whom Blaha replaced onboard the Mir, Shannon Lucid, held her first news conference since her return last month from a U.S.-record 188 days in space on the shuttle Atlantis and the Mir Space Station. She said she's been pleasantly surprised at how quickly she's readapted to gravity, and that she's very satisfied with her flight and with the work she did with Mir-21 cosmonauts Yuri Onufriyenko and Yury Usachev.

"Whenever you come back from space there's always a period of readaptation when you feel just a little strange, and you think "Why did I ever leave space? Why did I bother coming back?" I was very surprised at how quickly I readapted. It was so much better than what I'd thought it was going to be."

"We accomplished everything we set out to accomplish, so I'm satisfied with the flight, and I don't see how it could have been improved, from a personal standpoint."

And as she readjusts to her normal life on Earth, Lucid says her six months on orbit with her Russian colleagues taught them all a lesson about how much, and how quickly, the world can change.

"One night after supper Yuri and Yuri and I were sitting around and talking about what it was like when we were kids, about Russia and America and how we used to have such large differences of opinion. They were talking about how when they were growing up - one grew up in the Ukraine and one grew up in Russia - about how they feared America. I shared with them how it was when I was growing up in Oklahoma, how Russia was the big enemy we feared so much.

"It dawned on all three of us at once how remarkable it was that here we were, three people who grew up in totally different part of the world, mortally afraid of each other. Here we were sitting in an outpost in space together, working together and getting along just great. That was a remarkable revelation to the three of us. We never could have planned that."

Lucid says she was ready to come home from her record-setting mission after six months, but that she would make another long trip to a space station if she gets the chance. As she continues with her debriefings here at the Johnson Space Center, the Americans who will follow her and Blaha to the Russian space station are in training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, outside Moscow.

Jerry Linenger, set to succeed Blaha in January of next year, is nearing the end of the Russian portion of his training. Linenger is due back at the Johnson Space Center in mid-December for final training with his shuttle crewmates before the launch of mission STS-81, now targeted for mid-January.

During the upcoming week, Korzun, Kalery and Blaha are scheduled to conduct daily checks on a variety of science experiments underway onboard the Mir Space Station, including the greenhouse and passive accelerometer experiments.

| 8/30/96 | 9/6/96 | 9/13/96 | 9/20/96 | 9/27/96 | 10/4/96 | 10/11/96 | 10/18/96 |
| 10/25/96 | 11/1/96 | 11/8/96 | 11/15/96 | 11/22/96 | 12/6/96 | 12/13/96 | 12/20/96 |
| 1/3/97 | 1/10/97 | 1/24/97 | 2/7/97 | 2/14/97 | 2/21/97 |

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Mir-22 - Week of November 1, 1996

Mission Status Report - Filed from Mir Mission Control in Moscow

Interview with Tom Akers - STS-79 transfer chief talks about lessons learned

The mission of the latest American onboard the Russian space station Mir has entered its seventh week, with astronaut John Blaha furthering an agenda of scientific research designed to foster the body's ability to remain in space for extended periods of time. This is Blaha's 43rd day as a member of the Mir-22 crew, and the 46th since his launch onboard the shuttle Atlantis in September. His cosmonaut colleagues, commander Valeri Korzun and flight engineer Alexander Kaleri, have been in space almost 11 weeks, 74 days onboard the station.

Throughout this week Blaha has been conducting daily checks on the apparatus which houses the Cartilage In Space experiment, an investigation into the growth and maintenance of mature cartilage cells. Periodically, one of his tasks is to change out the liquid inside the experiment in which the cells grow, and this week he talked a bit about that work.

Blaha also sent down new video of the dwarf wheat plants in the greenhouse experiment, investigating the effects of space flight on the life cycle of plants to provide data for designing advanced life support systems for future space stations. During an interview, he discussed those experiments and others in giving an enthusiastic appraisal of his first six weeks on orbit.

"The mission is going great…. We're busy about 16 hours a day, to tell you the truth, but I'm loving every second of it. It's kind of hard for me to realize that about six weeks has gone by since I left the planet. It feels like about four or five days. We've got a lot of scientific experiments we're doing, we're growing wheat, we're growing cartilage in a bioreactor, we're growing a lot of crystals, we're doing a lot of acceleration measurements, measurements of the environment of this space station and of the structural design of it. Those kinds of things can help us build our better space station.

"Every once in awhile we get to look out at the planet; it's really beautiful when we get that opportunity. We look at the stars and Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn… that's very exciting." Blaha says there are only three things he's really missed during his time on orbit: his wife, watching Dallas Cowboys football games, and seeing the New York Yankees win the World series. But he says spending an extended period in space has its plusses, including learning the advantages of a space station mission over a space shuttle mission.

"I used to think there wouldn't be much difference, but after being in space for about two weeks you get into a routine. It's more like living on the planet, whereas on a space shuttle mission we're in a big rush to get things done because we're only there for a couple of weeks. Here you have more time, and there's time to relax on the weekends. I've noticed that the longer I stay here the better adapted I am and the more efficient I become at any of the work I'm trying to do."

All of that work requires both scientific material and personal supplies, both of which are ferried to the station on each shuttle docking flight. When Atlantis delivered Blaha in September, the shuttle and Mir crewmembers exchanged more than three tons of food, fuel and experiment hardware. The astronaut in charge of that operation was four-time shuttle veteran Tom Akers. In an interview this morning, Akers talked about lessons learned during STS-79 transfer operations.

"I think the biggest [innovation] that was incorporated was handling packages rather than small items… Instead of handling 50 small items in a locker and trying to keep track of them on each side, shuttle and Mir, you had one package, just like Federal Express or UPS would do if they were delivering something."

The Americans in line to follow John Blaha to the Mir Space Station are all in training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, outside Moscow. Astronaut Jerry Linenger had altitude chamber training in the Russian Orlan spacesuit this week, and spacewalk training in the Russian reduced gravity aircraft. Mike Foale also participated in the altitude chamber training, and received instruction on the Mir's communication systems and the Spektr and Priroda modules. Astronauts Wendy Lawrence, David Wolf, and Jim Voss all spent the week in intensive Russian language training, but they also had a session to taste a variety of Russian foods which will be available for inclusion in their on-orbit diet.

Joining them all in Star City are commander Charlie Precourt and the crew of STS-84, who arrived for a week-long training session. Precourt and company, who are slated to bring Foale to the Mir next May and come home with Linenger, received a tour of the training facilities and started simulator training on their rendezvous and docking, working with the Mir-23 crew of commander Vasily Tsibliev and flight engineer Aleksandr Lazutkin.

Astronaut Bill Shepherd, training to lead the first crew to live on the International Space Station, spent the week in Russian language classes and received Soyuz capsule systems training.

Next week, commander Bob Cabana and his STS-88 crewmembers, who will undertake the first International Space Station assembly flight in December of next year, arrive in Russia to watch the first integrated systems testing of the functional cargo block. That first on-orbit component of the International Space Station is slated for launch by the Russians late in 1997. The STS-88 astronauts will be present at the Khrunichev production facility in Moscow to observe the systems testing on the FGB.

On orbit, John Blaha's schedule for the coming week calls for him to devote the majority of his time to monitoring a variety of life science and advanced technology experiments. Those include the cartilage cell experiment in the biotechnology system, and an evaluation of the electrical characteristics of high temperature superconductors called MIDAS, or Materials in Devices as Superconductors.

| 8/30/96 | 9/6/96 | 9/13/96 | 9/20/96 | 9/27/96 | 10/4/96 | 10/11/96 | 10/18/96 |
| 10/25/96 | 11/1/96 | 11/8/96 | 11/15/96 | 11/22/96 | 12/6/96 | 12/13/96 | 12/20/96 |
| 1/3/97 | 1/10/97 | 1/24/97 | 2/7/97 | 2/14/97 | 2/21/97 |

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Mir-22 - Week of November 8, 1996

Mission Status Report - Filed from Mir Mission Control in Moscow

The mission of the latest American to the Russian Space Station Mir is now in its eighth week, extending the base of knowledge about human adaptation to weightlessness in preparation for the next phase of space exploration, the International Space Station. Veteran astronaut John Blaha has now been in space 53 days, and today is his 50th day as a member of the Mir-22 crew. Mir commander Valeri Korzun and flight engineer Alexander Kaleri have been in space 83 days, 81 onboard the station.

The schedule of crew activity the past three days has been reduced, as the Russians observe the anniversary of their October revolution. But this week Korzun, Kaleri and Blaha have been placing structural measurement tools at various locations on the station, and connecting them to a central monitoring device as part of the Mir structural dynamics experiment. This investigation of the structural dynamics of the Mir on orbit is designed to help understand the behavior of large, complex structures in Earth orbit as preparations continue for launch of the first components of the International Space Station about a year from now.

As Blaha has continued familiarizing himself with the Mir, he has found that his months of Mir training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, outside Moscow, didn't do the station justice. In a recent radio interview he talked about how much bigger, and newer, the Mir is than he had expected.

"From the outside it looks like a beautiful new, shining space station, like it was just sitting in the shop, waiting to be bought. From the inside two of the modules that came up in the past two years look absolutely new. The other four modules that have been here over a period of time, going back to 11 years, look well-used."

Blaha continues: "It's not cramped up here, there's lots of room. That was something I misjudged from all my training in Star City; this is a big space station. There must be about five times the volume to move around in on this space station, compared to the space shuttle."

The space shuttle Atlantis returns to the Mir early next year on STS-81 to bring Blaha home from his four-month mission and deliver astronaut Jerry Linenger for his tour of duty. It will also deliver tons of food, fuel and other supplies as it has on previous Mir docking missions. That first shuttle mission of 1997 will be commanded by veteran astronaut Mike Baker; recently he talked about how the supplies transfer lessons of STS-79 are being put to use, and how he and his crew are progressing in their training.

"We have certainly talked with the STS-79 crew and listened to all their debriefs on transfer. Marsha Ivins is our loadmaster, and she has worked closely with Tom Akers [the STS-79 loadmaster] to see what recommendations he has made. Of course we will incorporate all of those.

"Specifically, I think one of the biggest things that's going to help us out is that on every one of these flights we're improving our logistics transfer. This time both the cosmonauts and John Blaha onboard the Mir will have done this once before already. I think that will be a big plus in our favor. John already has a couple of bags packed, so he's getting ready. The other thing we will do is to get timely information by talking to John several times and using our Mission Control folks over in Moscow to talk to him and make sure all of his stuff is ready to go. Of course this is a very dynamic thing. Even today we don't know exactly what we will be carrying up and transferring. So we will try to pin that down as soon as we can. I'm sure it will go very smoothly."

The astronauts who will follow John Blaha to the Mir are proceeding with their training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City. This week, they were joined by commander Charlie Precourt and the crew of STS-84, in town for a one-week training session. Precourt and crew are slated to dock with the Mir Space Station next May, delivering astronaut Mike Foale and returning with Jerry Linenger, who will relieve Blaha in January.

Also visiting Russia this week were the crew of STS-88, led by commander Bob Cabana. The astronauts who will undertake the first International Space Station assembly flight in December of 1997 were on hand at the kKhrunichev production facility in Moscow to observe the first integrated systems testing of the Russian-built functional cargo block, the first on-orbit component of the new space station, which is to be launched by the Russians late next year.

| 8/30/96 | 9/6/96 | 9/13/96 | 9/20/96 | 9/27/96 | 10/4/96 | 10/11/96 | 10/18/96 |
| 10/25/96 | 11/1/96 | 11/8/96 | 11/15/96 | 11/22/96 | 12/6/96 | 12/13/96 | 12/20/96 |
| 1/3/97 | 1/10/97 | 1/24/97 | 2/7/97 | 2/14/97 | 2/21/97 |

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Mir-22 - Week of November 15, 1996

Mission Status Report - Filed from Mir Mission Control in Moscow

Now concluding his ninth week aboard the Russian Mir Space Station, John Blaha's weekly video report was upbeat and positive.

"Everything is going very fine here on the Mir Space Station, and all the science is preceding well, all the mircrobiology, all the material science, all the assessment of the environment, all the Earth obs... I really appreciate all the help that everybody on the ground has been giving me and all the preparation that went into this mission. "I think that the Mir/shuttle program is outstanding and I think that we're headed in the right direction with our new space station and all of our international cooperation that we're going to get from that."

The schedule of crew activity onboard the station slowed down near the end of last week as the Russians celebrated the anniversary of their October revolution, but the work pace is now back to normal with the crew continuing to work on a variety of experiments.

Blaha, along with Mir-22 Commander Valeri Korzun and Flight Engineer Alexander Kaleri, conducted the monthly microbial sampling of the air surfaces, water supply and themselves, to monitor, identify and quantify bacteria present in space craft systems.

This week, the crew also conducted the second in-flight experiment to collect urine and saliva for a metabolic study related to protein metabolism and kidney stone risk. This experiment is done routinely within 14 days of a planned undocking of a Russian or American spacecraft so that the excess urine can be properly disposed.

The crew also continued to perform routine Earth observations and photography over the week to monitor changes on the Earth's surface from space, and to photograph events such as hurricanes, plankton blooms and volcanic eruptions.

The next Progress resupply vehicle, that will carry the crew's Christmas presents from home, is scheduled for launch November 20 and will dock to the station two days later.

Blaha, a longtime Dallas Cowboys fan, took an opportunity this week to send his congratulations to the team on their recent win over the San Francisco 49ers.

"I just want to say something to the Dallas Cowboys. I was really proud of them for their big victory out there in San Francisco. That's really great. From the news I heard, the game was tied at the end and you got the ball and moved down the field, the line really blocked great, and the receivers got open. Troy threw the ball well, Emmitt ran well, and the whole team really played great. It looks like, with the defense, they smashed people pretty good and the linebackers planned good. The defense and the secondaries and the special teams, you're on your way to another great playoff season. I wish you a lot of luck. I'm a great fan of yours."

| 8/30/96 | 9/6/96 | 9/13/96 | 9/20/96 | 9/27/96 | 10/4/96 | 10/11/96 | 10/18/96 |
| 10/25/96 | 11/1/96 | 11/8/96 | 11/15/96 | 11/22/96 | 12/6/96 | 12/13/96 | 12/20/96 |
| 1/3/97 | 1/10/97 | 1/24/97 | 2/7/97 | 2/14/97 | 2/21/97 |

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Mir-22 - Week of November 22, 1996

Mission Status Report - Filed from Mir Mission Control in Moscow

The Mir-22 crew spent its week preparing to receive a host of new supplies which arrived at the space station early this morning onboard a Progress resupply capsule which launched from Russia early Wednesday.

Cosmonaut Researcher John Blaha and his crewmates - Commander Valeri Korzun and Flight Engineer Alexander "Sasha" Kaleri - received all sorts of new supplies needed for their ongoing mission, including food, clothing, water and fuel for the stations engines, along with other personal items sent up by their families for the upcoming holidays.

To prepare for and study the docking of the new Progress, the Space Acceleration Measurement System was activated on the station prior to the undocking of the resident Progress so as to measure the microgravity disturbances caused by the undocking and docking of vehicles with the station. The experiment measured the disturbances in order to determine to what extent the movements may affect data being obtained from the numerous science experiments being conducted onboard Mir.

Blaha said this resupply process, along with other systems and procedures currently being conducted on Mir, is being performed much as it will be on the International Space Station. "All of these things that we're doing are just folding in to really make us get a head start when we get our new space station in orbit," Blaha said. "I'm very proud to be a small part of that development process."

Other work performed on the station this week included additional experiments routinely scheduled with a planned undocking of a Russian or American spacecraft. This work included the collection of urine and saliva samples from the crew needed for a metabolic study relating protein metabolism and kidney stone risk. This sample collection is done within 14 days of an undocking so that the excess urine can be properly disposed. The crew also conducted an analysis of some of the data collected during the monthly microbial sampling of the air, surfaces, water supply and crew to study the stations environment and its inhabitants.

Blaha also has been taking advantage of the view from the space station, continuing with Earth observations and photographing the planet.

"I have filmed just about the whole planet now," Blaha said. "I got some beautiful photography of Australia... and fantastic photography of the United States, many cities, and a lot of photography of different ocean areas for oceanographers."

| 8/30/96 | 9/6/96 | 9/13/96 | 9/20/96 | 9/27/96 | 10/4/96 | 10/11/96 | 10/18/96 |
| 10/25/96 | 11/1/96 | 11/8/96 | 11/15/96 | 11/22/96 | 12/6/96 | 12/13/96 | 12/20/96 |
| 1/3/97 | 1/10/97 | 1/24/97 | 2/7/97 | 2/14/97 | 2/21/97 |

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Mir-22 - Week of December 6, 1996

Mission Status Report - Filed from Mir Mission Control in Moscow

Astronaut Shannon Lucid was recognized by President Clinton this week with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor for her record six-month stay on the Russian Mir Space Station. The medal, given sparingly for "extraordinary service to the nation," Clinton said, was the first to be bestowed to a woman and a scientist.

"Dr. Lucid achieved that kind of service for 188 days this year - the longest flight by an American in space, the longest mission for any woman of any nation in space, five shuttle missions altogether."

With participants from the U.S. and Russia looking on, Lucid gave credit to both countries for the success of the flight, calling the event "a story of two nations, two great space-faring nations that cooperate together and work together, and it's just a foretaste of what can happen in the future."

This partnership with the Russians, which has allowed the U.S. to have a continued presence in space as part of the Mir crews, is only the beginning of a partnership which is now extending into the new space station era with the upcoming construction of the International Space Station and beyond.

"Her mission did much to cement the alliance in space we have formed with Russia," Clinton said. "It demonstrated that, as we move into a truly global society, space exploration can serve to deepen our understanding, not only of our planet and our universe, but of those who share the Earth with us."

Congress authorized the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1969. Recipients are recommended by NASA's administrator and awarded by the President. Since its institution, ten astronauts have been awarded the medal: Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, Pete Conrad, John Glenn, Alan Shepard, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, John Young, Thomas Stafford, Jim Lovell and Shannon Lucid.

Meanwhile, the current crew of the Russian space station, Mir-22 Commander Valeri Korzun, Flight Engineer Alexander "Sasha" Kaleri and Cosmonaut Researcher John Blaha, continues where Lucid and her Mir-21 crewmates - Commander Yuri Onufriyenko and Flight Engineer Yury Usachev - left off. Korzun and Kaleri underwent their first space walk of the mission Monday, leaving the station for almost six hours to install additional solar arrays on the station, which they hooked up and connected in an effort to end some occasional power failures experienced by the Mir. Blaha remained in the Mir, monitoring station functions and taking some video of the space walkers. In 1997, Astronaut Jerry Linenger will be the first American to don a Russian space suit and perform a spacewalk from Mir.

Blaha and his crewmates also had a chance to greet their fellow space travelers on Columbia over the holiday weekend, with each of the crews exchanging well wishes for safe and successful flights.

| 8/30/96 | 9/6/96 | 9/13/96 | 9/20/96 | 9/27/96 | 10/4/96 | 10/11/96 | 10/18/96 |
| 10/25/96 | 11/1/96 | 11/8/96 | 11/15/96 | 11/22/96 | 12/6/96 | 12/13/96 | 12/20/96 |
| 1/3/97 | 1/10/97 | 1/24/97 | 2/7/97 | 2/14/97 | 2/21/97 |

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Mir-22 - Week of December 13, 1996

Mission Status Report - Filed from Mir Mission Control in Moscow

Astronaut John Blaha's four-month tour of duty on the Russian space station Mir is heading into the home stretch. Little more than a month is left before the shuttle Atlantis is targeted to return to the station for the fifth time and make the second exchange of American astronauts living and working there. Today is Blaha's 85th day on orbit as a member of the Mir-22 crew, and his 88th in space; his Russian colleagues, commander Valeri Korzun and flight engineer Alexander Kaleri, have been in space 118 days, 116 onboard the station.

Throughout his time onboard the Mir Blaha has been monitoring dwarf wheat plants growing in a greenhouse; last week he harvested mature plants which grew from seeds planted in August while Shannon Lucid was onboard. This experiment into the fundamental biology of how space flight affects development of plants has applications not only for growing food in space, but as Blaha points out, for growing food here on Earth.

The American next in line to share Mir's quarters has completed his cosmonaut training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. Jerry Linenger returned to the Johnson Space Center this week for final training with his STS-81 crewmates and preparations for their launch on the shuttle Atlantis, still targeted for January 12.

This week Atlantis was rolled out from the Vehicle Assembly Building to launch pad 39-B at the Kennedy Space Center. Ground crews have removed the actuators on the orbiter's six hatches to install locking mechanisms designed to ensure that the hatches work properly, to permit the exchange of astronauts and supplies during next month's mission; that work is expected to be completed before Christmas. Shuttle program managers believe a lost screw from an internal gear mechanism was responsible for the hatch jam on the shuttle Columbia which prevented the two spacewalks planned last month during STS-80.

Meanwhile, Atlantis commander Mike Baker and his crew will be at KSC Monday and Tuesday for the final dress rehearsal of their countdown.

Astronaut Mike Foale, scheduled to follow Linenger to the Mir on STS-84 next May, continues his training in Star City along with astronauts Wendy Lawrence, David Wolf and Jim Voss. Lawrence will relieve Foale in September of next year, and NASA has now named the crew who will be transporting Lawrence to the Russian space station.

Science tops the agenda for the Mir-22 crew during the coming week. This weekend, Korzun, Kaleri and Blaha will be engaged with the continuing Earth observation work of their mission, but they'll also have some time off to relax. Throughout the week Blaha will be busy with a variety of the scientific experiments he is working with onboard, furthering the investigations into the long-term impacts of life in the microgravity environment of low Earth orbit.

| 8/30/96 | 9/6/96 | 9/13/96 | 9/20/96 | 9/27/96 | 10/4/96 | 10/11/96 | 10/18/96 |
| 10/25/96 | 11/1/96 | 11/8/96 | 11/15/96 | 11/22/96 | 12/6/96 | 12/13/96 | 12/20/96 |
| 1/3/97 | 1/10/97 | 1/24/97 | 2/7/97 | 2/14/97 | 2/21/97 |

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Mir-22 - Week of December 20, 1996

Mission Status Report - Filed from Mir Mission Control in Moscow

Crew News Conference - Mir's crew talks about holiday plans, International Space Station, and the recent EVAs

The four-month mission of American astronaut John Blaha on the Russian space station Mir now has just one month more to go, as he and his cosmonaut colleagues begin to turn their attention to the upcoming fifth docking of the space shuttle to the station, and the second exchange of astronauts furthering a permanent American presence in space. But they're also getting ready for the holidays.

Today is Blaha's 95th day in space since his launch on the shuttle Atlantis in September, and the 92nd since he relieved astronaut Shannon Lucid and began his tour of duty on the Mir. Next Wednesday, his 100th day in space, Blaha will be the first American to spend Christmas on orbit since the last trio of Skylab astronauts in 1973. During a crew news conference this week, Blaha explained that he and his crewmates have their holiday plans set.

"We have a number of things we will do on Christmas. I personally have a number of Christmas presents from people on the ground that came up on the Progress and I have one or two for Sasha and Valeri and we'll have a special meal that day."

Mir-22 commander Valeri Korzun, who has been in space with flight engineer Alexander Kaleri 125 days and onboard the station for 123 days, took obvious delight in discussing the menu for Christmas dinner.

"We're going to have an outstanding menu," Korzun said in Russian, "a menu that will include both Russian and American products. We will have traditional cakes and other dishes, lamb, pork, and a wonderful dessert, as well as Italian food - macaroni and cheese, and other things."

Blaha added, "In six days we're going to have quite a feast!"

During the crew news conference a large EVA glove hovered in the air in front of them. The glove was worn by Kaleri during two recent spacewalks, when he and Korzun finished installing the new cooperative solar array and two antennas to the exterior of the station. Kaleri says they had a lot of fun on the job.

During the news conference Blaha was asked if he planned any New Year's resolutions; his answer - his hope for the construction of a new space station, built through the cooperation of many nations.

"An International Space Station like this, and this is one that is now 11 years old, is absolutely an incredible research facility, and it certainly is the way to bring people like ourselves - Valeri, Sasha, and myself, and all the team on the ground of Russians and Americans who have worked on this mission - as well the French were involved in this mission, a German will be shortly... in a month and a half will come up with a new Soyuz.

"So I can tell you this - an International Space Station like this... really plays a vital role in world peace and helping people throughout our planet understand each [other] better than we currently do, and of course the value of the research stands for itself. But I think we need to press forward, and if additional funding for whatever reason is necessary, I think it certainly is the right thing to do. We have a huge budget in our country and we certainly can afford an International Space Station to help world peace."

This week Blaha also provided a video status report of his recent work on orbit, highlighting the next generation of wheat in the greenhouse experiment, the growth of cartilage in the bioreactor, and the human life sciences experiments looking at how the human body responds to long periods in space.

On Christmas Day, Blaha will mark his 100th continuous day in space. The following day, the Mir-22 crew will conduct a periodic orbital reboost maneuver, which will put the station temporarily in an elliptical orbit of the Earth. On December 28, Blaha will complete 100 days onboard the station as a member of the Mir-22 crew.

Beginning New Year's Day, Blaha will begin concentrating on packing up his experiment hardware for the return to Earth. On Monday, January 6, the space shuttle management team will conduct the Flight Readiness Review for mission STS-8, and set a firm launch date and time. Then on Wednesday, January 8, the Mir crewmembers will execute another orbital adjustment maneuver, recircularizing the station's orbit at the proper altitude for docking with the shuttle the following week.

| 8/30/96 | 9/6/96 | 9/13/96 | 9/20/96 | 9/27/96 | 10/4/96 | 10/11/96 | 10/18/96 |
| 10/25/96 | 11/1/96 | 11/8/96 | 11/15/96 | 11/22/96 | 12/6/96 | 12/13/96 | 12/20/96 |
| 1/3/97 | 1/10/97 | 1/24/97 | 2/7/97 | 2/14/97 | 2/21/97 |

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Mir-22 - Week of January 3, 1997

Mission Status Report - Filed from Mir Mission Control in Moscow

Cosmonaut Researcher John Blaha took time out during the holidays to send holiday greetings from the Russian Mir Space Station and talk with reporters about plans for the holidays.

"I certainly wish everybody on the planet a very merry Christmas, a happy New Year," Blaha said. "I would like to wish all of you peace and goodwill, to all of the creatures who are living on the planet, as well as tell everybody that our planet is a very special place in the cosmos and in the universe. From space, here on the Mir Space Station you really see it that way, and at Christmas time I would just like to remind everybody that all of those who have things need to share with those who don't, to make our planet a more special place.

"I would also like to say, as I give you this Christmas message, that of course the whole purpose of Christmas -- and this is Christmas Eve right now onboard the Mir Space Station in orbit -- is to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and of course that happened approximately 1,996 years ago, so that's the purpose of Christmas."

Before the holidays, Blaha and his crew mates Mir-22 Commander Valeri Korzun and Flight Engineer Alexander "Sasha" Kaleri talked with reporters about their holiday plans.

"Certainly we have a number of things we will do on Christmas," Blaha said. "I personally have a number of Christmas presents from people on the ground that came up on the Progress and I have one or two for Sasha and Valeri and we'll have a special meal that day. There will be a two-way video teleconference with my family on Christmas. Brenda will be there with my son Jim and my daughter-in-law and my grandson, and my daughter Caroline and my son Steven. I think my mother is going to be there as well. So we will have that, and it will be a nice and very exciting Christmas day, I think, for me."

"We're going to have an outstanding menu, a menu that will include both Russian and American products," Korzun said. "We will have traditional cakes and other dishes, lamb, pork and a wonderful dessert, as well as Italian food, macaroni and cheese, and other things."

Reporters asked Blaha whether he would make any New Year's resolutions.

"I haven't thought about that, but you ask me the question so I'll do my best to answer." He said. "I think any New Year's resolution I would make is that I hope the space program and this space station and a replacement for it, which we call the International Space Station, we continue to build. It's certainly the right thing to do. Space plays a vital role in our society, so my New Year's resolution would be that I wish we continue pressing forward with this. From a personal note, I've learned a lot up here. Maybe when I return to Earth I'll try to apply some of it to try and be a nicer human being."

Before the holidays the crew spent time performing housekeeping and maintenance chores. Science activities included monitoring of the BioTechnology System, including the visual inspection of the growth of bovine cartilage cells, as well as sampling of the media in the BTS. The crew performed a direct feed of the growth media to the cartilage cells and sampling of the media in the BTS.

The BioTechnology System is a facility that will be used throughout joint U.S. - Russian flights to grow tissues in microgravity. On this mission, bovine, or cow cartilage is being grown. By growing cartilage in microgravity, researchers will obtain a better three-dimensional model which they can compare to cells grown on the Earth, helping to determine how cells grow in different environments. Researchers say this kind of research, not possible because of the gravity on Earth, eventually may lead to development of new drugs or medical procedures.

The crew also monitored a second wheat crop growing in the Mir greenhouse. Air being drawn into the greenhouse returned to normal temperatures, approximately 25 degrees Celsius, and will be monitored daily for fluctuations that could affect plant growth. The sprouts that were planted on Dec. 6, were around 12 centimeters in height, showing somewhat rapid growth rate.

A Mir Structural Dynamics Experiment studying the night to day transition vibrations of Mir was performed. Several more sessions measuring the vibrations of Mir during exercise, and the docking and undocking of space shuttles are planned.

Throughout his four-month stay on Mir, Blaha exercises daily and explained his regime to reporters.

"I do an exercise regime here daily that the Russians have been doing on this space station for now 11 years," Blaha said. "That is, we have a treadmill here [in the Base Block] and a treadmill in the Kristall module. You set a particular load on there and run for a certain period at different paces, you walk, you run... In between you use expanders for different muscle groups in your legs, neck, arms, shoulders, and waist. It's a program they have developed over the years. It's a very good program. That's one exercise, and it takes about an hour to accomplish.

"Another thing we do on the same day, about six hours later we ride on the bicycle. We do that for our cardiovascular systems. We ride a different schedule of times and loads and we do that for a period of about 45 minutes and that also is very good. So one of the exercises is for muscles and the other is for cardiovascular health.

'I might say, I think it's an excellent program and I highly recommend that we start with that program on the [International] Space Station. As to how I think I will feel when I return to Earth, I don't know. That's a very individual thing and different people have different reactions to returning to Earth. That's why we continue to do [cardiovascular] experiments, to try to understand why there are differences in different people when the come back to Earth. In the past on shuttle flights I haven't had a problem, but I may have a vestibular problem when I return this time. I don't know; we'll have to wait and find out."

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Mir-22 - Week of January 10, 1997

Mission Status Report - Filed from Mir Mission Control in Moscow

The residents of the Russian space station Mir are sprucing up their orbiting space complex, ready to put out the welcome mat for the arrival next week of the space shuttle Atlantis and its crew. The scheduled launch of mission STS-81 at 3:27 central time Sunday morning on the fifth Shuttle-Mir docking mission will signal the final ten days on orbit for astronaut John Blaha, and the beginning of four months in space for his successor, astronaut Jerry Linenger.

Blaha has been in space 116 days since his launch to the Mir in September on mission STS-79, and a member of the Mir-22 crew for 113 days since relieving Shannon Lucid. Mir commander Valeri Korzun and flight engineer Alexander Kaleri have been in space 146 days as of today, and onboard the station for 144 days. During an interview yesterday Blaha praised the working relationship he developed with his cosmonaut colleagues during their time together on orbit.

I am very pleased with the way the Mir-22 flight has gone. I think it's been incredible. Valeri and Sasha and my relationship has really developed over the past four months. We didn't train one minute together on the Earth. I arrived on orbit and we started working together and we've met each other over those months, and I'm absolutely amazed at how that has turned out. It's been quite a successful mission."

During that final television downlink before the arrival of his replacement, Blaha summed up what he considers the success stories of his tour of duty onboard the Mir.

"The first thing we have accomplished is we have significantly extended our relationship, the relationship between the Russians and the Americans working together in space. And of course that's the whole mission of the Phase 1 program. As you know, the longer-term goal is that we will build a new space station together and work on it into the 21st century.

"The second thing I think we've accomplished is that we've learned a lot about how to do an exercise program in space. I've been very impressed with what I've seen the Russians have developed over the past 18 years on two space stations which they have had, the Salyut and the Mir... and I have already seen the results of that... We've got a real 'leg up' on that.

"The third thing is that the Russians have a lot of 'medical controls,' as they call them. And these medical controls evaluate the health of people onboard. I think those medical controls are a very good starting point for the International Space Station, so we don't have to reinvent that. These medical controls make people keep in shape on orbit. Without them I don't think people would keep in shape as well."

The science agenda of the Shuttle-Mir program is designed to learn more about the effects of the microgravity environment in the areas of human life sciences, fundamental biology, and advanced technology with application for the development of the International Space Station. In an interview this week, Shuttle-Mir mission scientist John Uri was asked to assess the experiment results Blaha will bring home with him on STS-81.

"I would have to say that the science John Blaha conducted along with his cosmonaut crewmates has been extremely successful," Uri responded. "Every experiment that we set out for them to do has been completed, and as far as we can tell to this point we're going to be getting good data from all of them."

Assuming an on-time launch of Atlantis Sunday morning, Blaha's months as a member of the Mir crew will end in the early morning hours next Wednesday, soon after Tuesday night's docking, and astronaut Jerry Linenger will begin his tour, extending the permanent American presence in space. Blaha says he's eager to see Linenger and is ready to show him the ropes.

"We have a small club right now," Blaha said. "That club is Norm Thagard, Shannon Lucid, and myself. Jerry is soon to join that club. We will have a reunion and I will sit down with Jerry as much as I can and try to show him many of the things I've learned here to help him start off on his flight way ahead so he will feel comfortable right out of the block."

For his part, Linenger is ready to begin his extended spaceflight; during the STS-81 crew news conference last month he described what's in store for him during his time on orbit.

"I'm a full-fledged crewmember, I'm the Flight Engineer 2, as they call it. So I'll help with a lot of life support systems and take care of Mir systems wherever I can pitch in and help. I've been trained in all those systems. My primary role, though, is doing all the U.S. experiments that we have. We've got a wide assortment of life science experiments, materials experiments, you name it. It's basically like a long Spacelab flight."

The main part of the EVA concerns an experiment called OPMs, the Optical Properties Monitor. That's one of the most sophisticated material exposure experiments ever devised. We will take out a box about four feet by four feet. We'll take the lid off of it and expose these materials to the space environment. It rotates and we have an onboard computer where we monitor how the materials are doing, either by mass spectrometry or by visually looking at it. The EVA is going to be about six hours. We also retrieve some experiments that have been left out there before we come back in."

Linenger also talked about some of the reasons he chooses to do what he does--what was characterized in one question as a "pioneer spirit."

One word that really strikes me is 'pioneer.' I think most of the astronauts, 99 percent of us feel that we're out at the leading edge of technology and doing things to move toward the future and make things better for our children down the line. Maybe I'm still more immature, still the kid that's excited about going into space and going out there and doing new things in space. When I do public relations things at the different schools I see the kids saying 'Wow!' about everything that we do, and when I heard about the opportunity to do something like this - go and spend five months in space, go work with a group of people that back in my Navy days was the opponent - it struck me as something that I'd love to go out there and do at an early stage of the game."

Linenger and the astronauts who will accompany him to the Mir are now at the Kennedy Space Center launch site. Commander Mike Baker and his crew of five arrived at the Shuttle Launch Facility Wednesday night, and the countdown continues for a liftoff from Launch Pad 39-B on Sunday morning. The 10-day mission of Atlantis, highlighted by the fifth docking with the Mir and the second exchange of Americans living and working onboard, will also feature the transfer of three tons of food, fuel, clothing, experiment supplies and other material with the orbiting Russian outpost. Atlantis is scheduled to land at KSC January 22, ending John Blaha's long space trip.

While launch preparations proceed in Florida, the man who will follow Linenger to the Mir later this year is wrapping up a holiday vacation in Houston before returning to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, outside Moscow. Mike Foale, who will go to the Mir on STS-84 in May, will soon rejoin the other Americans there training for missions to the Mir and to the International Space Station.

| 8/30/96 | 9/6/96 | 9/13/96 | 9/20/96 | 9/27/96 | 10/4/96 | 10/11/96 | 10/18/96 |
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| 1/3/97 | 1/10/97 | 1/24/97 | 2/7/97 | 2/14/97 | 2/21/97 |

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Mir-22 - Week of January 24, 1997

Mission Status Report - Filed from Mir Mission Control in Moscow

Astronaut Jerry Linenger began his working with his experiments this week as he settled in with his Russian crewmates, Commander Valeri Korzun and Flight Engineer Alexander Kaleri.

This week's activities included initial activation of the Biotechnology System, designed to support long-duration experiments in a low-gravity environment. Experiments to be conducted in the BTS are involved with tissue culture, protein crystal growth and fundamental biotechnology experiments. Facility checkout of the BTS will ensure that risk-free experiments can be conducted on the International Space Station.

The facility consists of six modules designed for easy changeout to accommodate changing science requirements and advances made during the several year planned period of its operation. After Atlantis undocked from Mir, the cosmonauts took a day off to relax and unpack some of the material transferred from the shuttle. Linenger told flight controllers that unpacking his many boxes of gear was like opening Christmas presents.

Linenger created quarters for himself in the Spektr module and by Wednesday of the first week, the triathlete began his regular exercise regimen, which includes two hours each day of running on a treadmill and riding on a stationary bicycle.

Linenger began work with some of the life sciences and medical investigations he will be busy with during his stay on the orbiting facility. He also replaced radiation dosimeters that went back to Earth on Atlantis with new instruments that will continue measurements of radiation aboard Mir.

Linenger and some of his former STS-81 crewmates took samples from Mir's air, water and physical surfaces to check for microbes. The samples were returned to Earth on the shuttle and will be compared to other samples taken periodically through the mission.

The final harvest of wheat from the Greenhouse experiment occurred Jan. 17 during the docked phase of operations. The equipment was then dismantled and stowed.

Two instruments--the Mir Structural Dynamics Experiment and the Space Accelerations Measurement System--took measurements during the docking mission to help flight engineers better understand the dynamics of the 400,000-ton spacecraft created by the docking of the shuttle and Mir.

| 8/30/96 | 9/6/96 | 9/13/96 | 9/20/96 | 9/27/96 | 10/4/96 | 10/11/96 | 10/18/96 |
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| 1/3/97 | 1/10/97 | 1/24/97 | 2/7/97 | 2/14/97 | 2/21/97 |

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Mir-22 - Week of February 7, 1997

Mission Status Report - Filed from Mir Mission Control in Moscow

The cosmonauts of the Mir Space Station are not onboard that Russian outpost this morning--they are now in their Soyuz capsule, flying it to another of the Mir's docking ports. The maneuver is in preparation for the planned arrival on Wednesday of another Soyuz carrying the cosmonauts of Mir-23, and to take advantage of new technical capabilities on that capsule as well a new docking guidance system antenna on the station's docking module.

After jettisoning the Progress re-supply vehicle which was docked to the Kvant-1 module yesterday, Mir-22 commander Valeri Korzun, flight engineer Alexander Kaleri and U.S. astronaut Jerry Linenger began today's operation when they entered the Soyuz capsule several hours ago.

Today's movement of the Soyuz capsule comes 174 days after Korzun and Kaleri rode it to orbit last August, and 172 days after they docked it to the Mir to begin their six-month mission on orbit. For their crewmate Linenger, today is his 24th day as a Mir crewmember and the 27th day in space of his planned four-month tour of duty, less than a week from the scheduled arrival of the men with whom he'll spend the rest of his time on orbit.

Mir-23 commander Vasily Tsibliev and flight engineer Aleksandr Lazutkin will be launched Monday morning along with German cosmonaut-researcher Reinhold Ewald. Ewald will conduct a short science program while Tsibliev and Lazutkin take over operation of the Mir from Korzun and Kaleri.

One highlight of the Mir-23 mission is scheduled for mid-March, when Tsibliev and Linenger are to conduct a spacewalk to install experiment hardware to the exterior of the station.

The cooperative U.S.-Russian effort is also evident today in Washington, D.C., where Vice President Al Gore and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin are concluding another in a series of meetings on economic and technological cooperation. Among other items on the agenda, they are hearing a report on the progress of cooperative space activities and the outlook for future joint operations, including updates on the schedule for International Space Station assembly work and refined timelines for the delayed completion of the Russian Service Module.

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| 1/3/97 | 1/10/97 | 1/24/97 | 2/7/97 | 2/14/97 | 2/21/97 |

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Mir-22 - Week of February 14, 1997

Mission Status Report - Filed from Mir Mission Control in Moscow

Mir-22 Flight Engineer Jerry Linenger is knee-deep in his experiments aboard the Russian Mir Space Station and adjusting to his microgravity environment.

"The first couple of weeks it was very, very difficult to run on the treadmill," Linenger said during an interview last week. "It is a lot tougher than I thought it would be, but now I kind of feel I am back to my old (exercise) pace and I feel real good."

Linenger reported that his days are very busy and was surprised to find that he has very little time to pursue his interest in the geography of the planet below.

"There is no free time to just go hang out and look out the window or do some other diversion sort of things," Linenger said. "I still have plenty of interest in looking out the window because I've only done it maybe once a day. I am not sure five months is going to be long enough up here."

Linenger and his Mir-22 crew mates - Commander Valeri Korzun and Alexander Kaleri--welcomed the Mir-23 cosmonauts - Commander Vasily Tsibliev, Flight Engineer Aleksandr Lazutkin and cosmonaut Researcher Reinhold Ewald--aboard the orbiting laboratory last week. The joint crews will conduct a variety of experiments for two weeks and Korzun and Kaleri will pack up their belongings for the trip home to Russia with Ewald.

Mir's atmosphere and the way microgravity affects the station have been the focus of the joint experiments this week.

"We worked on the Microgravity Isolation Mount," Linenger said. "On this mount we isolated the environment of Mir, in this case we were melting some metals down inside a furnace, looking at the properties of that and the diffusion coefficient."

Once the joint space operations are complete and the Mir-22 crew and Ewald leave for Earth, Linenger and Tsibliev will begin preparations for the first joint American-Russian space walk outside Mir currently scheduled for April 1.

The two space walkers will mount the Optical Properties Monitor experiment. This experiment will measure the effect of the space environment on a variety of materials, ranging from mirrors used in telescopes to coatings used on spacecraft.

"The experiment will set the stage for how astronauts and cosmonauts will work together on the International Space Station," said Steve Davis, project manager for the Optical Properties Monitor at Marshall Space Flight Center.

The Optical Properties Monitor is the first instrument of its kind. "What makes it unique," Davis explained, "is that it is capable of relaying information to Earth from orbit." The experiment will take weekly measurements of the condition of the samples and transmit this information to scientists on Earth.

"With previous studies, measurements could only be obtained following the experiment's flight," Davis said. "With this investigation, measurements will be taken and relayed to scientists throughout the flight, providing more detailed information than gathered from any previous study of the effects of space on materials."

During its scheduled nine months on Mir, the monitor will measure nearly 100 samples. "Overall, the measurements will show to what extent the materials deteriorated while exposed to the space environment," Davis said.

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Mir-22 - Week of February 21, 1997

Mission Status Report - Filed from Mir Mission Control in Moscow

U.S. astronaut Jerry Linenger, along with his Mir-22 and Mir-23 crewmates and a German researcher, completed another week of science activities on the Mir Space Station. Mir-23 Commander Vasily Tsibliev and Flight Engineer Aleksandr Lazutkin will replace Mir-22 commander Valeri Korzun and Flight Engineer Alexander Kaleri, who are scheduled to return to Earth in their Soyuz spacecraft on March 2. Joining Korzun and Kaleri on their return to Earth will be DARA astronaut Reinhold Ewald, who accompanied Tsibliev and Lazutkin to the Mir in their Soyuz capsule earlier this month.

The crew continued science operations in fundamental biology, microgravity science and Earth observation.

The first thermoluminescent dosimeters (TLD) processing for the fundamental biology radiation dosimetry investigation was performed February 13. This experiment uses TLDs to characterize the Mir radiation environment. Processing of the TLDs will continue at regularly scheduled intervals.

The Mir-23 crewmembers completed daily Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) backpain questionnaires. The newly arrived cosmonauts continued this activity for the first 10 days after reaching Mir. Linenger evaluated the fundamental biology discipline's Standard Interface Glovebox on February 13. This unit, a technology demonstration for this increment, will undergo several functional checkouts. The glovebox will be used during the SEEDS experiment for plant fixations and seed preparation.

Linenger initiated the human life sciences sleep investigation last Monday. This experiment will examine immune system alterations in relation to sleep in microgravity. It should provide long-term data on the physiology and behavior of human sleep under conditions of prolonged microgravity. The entire experiment will be conducted at scheduled intervals during Linenger's flight by both the NASA and Mir crews.

The Biotechnology System (BTS) hardware activation and functional evaluation was performed on February 17. Some problems which hindered previous attempts were solved, allowing a successful evaluation and activation of the BTS hardware.

On February 18, the Optical Properties Monitor (OPM) cable checkout was performed. The OPM will be deployed during a spacewalk by Linenger and Tsibliev in late March. It will collect data about the effects of exposure to the space environment outside Mir on certain materials for about 9 months. The OPM will retrieved by other spacewalking cosmonaut.

The weekly Kansas "Interactions" questionnaire, which profiles mood states and interpersonal group environments, was competed as scheduled on February 19. This activity is scheduled for both the NASA and MIR crews every Wednesday throughout Linenger's 4-month mission.

Activities planned for next week include completion of MRI backpain questionnaires by the Mir crew, Earth observations, the sleep experiment, formaldehyde monitoring, and a BTS Facility check.

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