Shuttle Mir

Article July 5, 2025
The official patch of the Shuttle-Mir program, representing aspects of both nations and space agencies. Credit: NASA
The official patch of the Shuttle-Mir program, representing aspects of both nations and space agencies. Credit: NASA

June 29th marked the anniversary of the first docking of an American space shuttle to the Russian space station Mir. Today this event is barely remembered (and, in fact, Mir itself does not seem to be much remembered at all, which is sad given its place in space history), but this was a seminal moment in human spaceflight.

The docking of Atlantis to Mir in the summer of 1995 took place only a few years after the conclusion of the Cold War, during which the presence of an American spacecraft at a Russian space station would have been unthinkable. But things were changing, and Atlantis’s docking was merely the next step in the program that was practically but unpoetically dubbed “Shuttle-Mir”.

This program deserves remembrance. If Shuttle-Mir hadn’t happened or hadn’t worked out, there would be no International Space Station today. So I’m going to take the opportunity provided by the anniversary of Atlantis’s 1995 Mir docking to go into it a little. Join me, if you will! 

 

The Background

Shuttle-Mir was not the first time the US and Russia cooperated in space. That honor goes to the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, a largely symbolic flight in 1975 where the final Apollo capsule docked to a Soyuz capsule in orbit and the two crews shook hands and palled around for two days.

While this was inspiring, it did not lead to any sort of renewed friendship between the two nations, nor any obvious avenues of future cooperation in space. Beyond the good optics, its most lasting legacy was probably forcing NASA and Roscosmos to figure out a docking collar that would work for both American and Russian spacecraft. That experience would come in handy later.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left Roscosmos in dire financial straits and more than willing to cooperate with an old rival to keep itself afloat and to keep its already creaky space station (the first pieces of Mir were launched in 1986, but the station aged quickly) aloft. NASA, lacking any obvious aspirational goals for its human spaceflight program after plans for an American space station named Freedom were cut, was also game. 

The shuttle Atlantis docked with Mir. Credit: NASA

In 1992 it was announced that the US and Russia would begin a new era of cooperation in space and in 1993 it was determined that the culmination of this partnership would be the construction of a massive new jointly-operated station (this, of course, eventually became the ISS). But such a gigantic undertaking would take a long time to get off the ground and required the two space agencies, NASA and Roscosmos, to get used to working together. So while the ISS was the ultimate goal, in the intervening time a new program sending NASA shuttles and astronauts to Mir was conceived.

 

First Flight

The first flight of the Shuttle-Mir program was not actually the flight that culminated in Atlantis docking in June 1995. In fact, the flight that is considered the first of the program, STS-60, didn’t go to Mir at all. It was a science and engineering flight that took place on Discovery in February 1994. It’s considered part of the program because, for the first time ever, a Russian cosmonaut was part of the crew of an American space mission, with Sergei Krikalev serving as mission specialist. 

Cosmonaut Valeriy V. Polyakov aboard Mir, as seen from the window of the shuttle Discovery during the “Near-Mir” flight. Credit: NASA
Cosmonaut Valeriy V. Polyakov aboard Mir, as seen from the window of the shuttle Discovery during the “Near-Mir” flight. Credit: NASA

The Atlantis docking wasn’t even the second flight. That honor went to STS-63 in February 1995. It, too, carried a cosmonaut, and it did go to Mir—it just didn’t dock. Given the cheeky nickname “Near-Mir”, on this mission Discovery rendezvoused with the station and got to within 37 feet (12.2 m) of Mir, close enough to wave to the station’s crew out the window. 

Then came the third flight of the Shuttle-Mir program…which was also not the Atlantis docking. In March 1995 a Soyuz lifted off from Kazakhstan carrying two cosmonauts and veteran NASA astronaut Norman Thagard. Thagard became the first American astronaut to ride a Soyuz and the first to serve a tour aboard Mir. The docking of Atlantis to Mir in June 1995 was, officially, the fourth flight of Shuttle-Mir, and represented the first docking of US and Russian spacecraft since Apollo-Soyuz twenty years prior.

 

Bits and Pieces

The approach of Atlantis to Mir actually represented a problem. While the issue of universal docking mechanisms had been solved thanks to Apollo-Soyuz, Mir simply had not been designed with shuttle dockings in mind. That thing had solar panels sticking out every which way—and the shuttle was neither small nor nimble. Almost all of the docking ports on Mir were deemed to represent too great a risk of a collision to let the bulky Atlantis anywhere near them. 

There was, of course, a place on Mir where Atlantis could reach. The docking port at the end of Mir’s long axis was far enough away from any solar panels that the shuttle could safely approach. That just also happened to be the port that the station’s Kristall module was attached to. To let Atlantis dock, the station crew had to detach part of the station and move it to a different port. Then, when Atlantis left, Kristall was moved back to where it had been. 

The space station Mir as seen in the distance from the space shuttle Atlantis. Credit: NASA
The space station Mir as seen in the distance from the space shuttle Atlantis. Credit: NASA

Obviously continuing to detach and reattach bits of the station wasn’t anybody’s idea of optimization, so the fifth flight (also of Atlantis, which essentially became Mir’s personal transport, flying seven Shuttle-Mir flights in a row) brought a new and improved docking module that got tacked onto the end of Kristall, allowing the shuttle to dock without rearranging the station.

The docking module wasn’t the only piece that Shuttle-Mir added to the station. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 there had been two more modules in the planning stages for Mir (well, actually there was an entire second station, Mir-2, but that went out the window real fast once the money dried up). The onset of Shuttle-Mir and the infusion of that sweet NASA cash allowed Roscosmos to finish construction on these modules, both of which would be retrofitted to carry large amounts of US science equipment.

Spektr actually made it to the station before Atlantis did, docking on June 1, 1995. This module became, more or less, the US headquarters aboard Mir, operating as the living quarters and lab space for US astronauts serving on the station—or at least it did until a resupply capsule smashed into it in 1997 and it became the first (and thus far only, thankfully) space station module to be punctured and undergo full depressurization. Due to the relative slowness of the leak, the crew had time to slam the door on Spektr before it took the rest of Mir’s air with it.

Priroda, which docked to Mir in April 1996, served as an international science hub, home to experiments operated by astronauts and cosmonauts representing twelve different nations as part of Roscosmos’ Interkosmos and Euromir programs, in addition to Shuttle-Mir.

 

Getting Along

The Shuttle-Mir program also saw seven NASA astronauts serve long-term tours aboard Mir. Norman Thagard was the first, and his stay was relatively short at only 3.5 months. The next astronaut aboard, Shannon Lucid, would set a new American space duration record of 188 days, a stretch unmatched until the days of the ISS. 

The seven NASA astronauts who served tours of duty aboard Mir. Credit: NASA
The seven NASA astronauts who served tours of duty aboard Mir. Credit: NASA

The dubious honor of the most notorious tours of duty belonged to Jerry Linenger and Mike Foale. Linenger was aboard in February 1997 when Mir suffered the worst fire in space ever experienced, nearly forcing the evacuation of the station (well, for the half of the people aboard who would have been able to make it to their Soyuz escape craft anyway). Four months later, Foale was one of the ones slamming the door on Spektr when it began to depressurize the station.

While the American tours on Mir were achievements in and of themselves and gave NASA the experience in long-duration spaceflight that it had thus far lacked, the training for these flights also forced NASA and Roscosmos staff into close contact with each other for long periods of time. They had to learn each other’s systems and had to learn to speak each other’s language. All of this proved critical when it came time to build the International Space Station.

 

Final Days

In total there were nine shuttle dockings to Mir over the Shuttle-Mir program (the last two carried out by Endeavour). The last occurred in June 1998 to bring the final astronaut to serve aboard Mir, Andrew Thomas, home. Mir would remain staffed until June 2000. Less than a year later, on March 23, 2001, Mir was deorbited.

The docking of the modules Zarya (left) and Unity (right) became the beginning of the International Space Station. Credit: NASA
The docking of the modules Zarya (left) and Unity (right) became the beginning of the International Space Station. Credit: NASA

Less than six months after the final flight of Shuttle-Mir, on November 20, 1998, a Russian Proton rocket roared off the launchpad. In orbit it deployed its cargo, a module originally intended to serve as the first piece of Mir-2. It was renamed Zarya, the Sunrise, and two weeks after it launched it was joined by the American-built module Unity. 

To this day these two conjoined modules form the heart of the International Space Station, Mir’s descendent, a place where nations that do not even like to talk to each other on Earth still work together. And that’s not a bad legacy for Shuttle-Mir to have left behind, if you think about it.