page_title: STS-86
section_title: Mission highlights
hierarchical_section_title: STS-86 / Mission highlights
caption_attribution_description: English: The Space Shuttle Atlantis blazes through the night sky to begin the STS-86 mission, slated to be the seventh of nine planned dockings of the Space Shuttle with the Russian Space Station Mir. Liftoff on Sept. 25 from Launch Pad 39A was at 10:34:19 p.m. EDT, within seconds of the preferred time, during a six-minute, 45-second launch window. The 10-day flight will include the transfer of the sixth U.S. astronaut to live and work aboard the Mir. After the docking, STS-86 Mission Specialist David A. Wolf will become a member of the Mir 24 crew, replacing astronaut C. Michael Foale, who will return to Earth aboard Atlantis with the remainder of the STS-86 crew. Foale has been on the Russian Space Station since mid-May. Wolf is scheduled to remain there about four months. Besides Wolf (embarking to Mir) and Foale (returning), the STS-86 crew includes Commander James D. Wetherbee, Pilot Michael J. Bloomfield, and Mission Specialists Wendy B. Lawrence, Scott E. Parazynski, Vladimir Georgievich Titov of the Russian Space Agency, and Jean-Loup J.M. Chretien of the French Space Agency, CNES. Other primary objectives of the mission are a spacewalk by Parazynski and Titov, and the exchange of about three-and-a-half tons of science/logistical equipment and supplies between Atlantis and the Mir.
context_page_description: STS-86 was a Space Shuttle Atlantis mission to the Mir space station. This was the last Atlantis mission before it was taken out of service temporarily for maintenance and upgrades, including the glass cockpit.
context_section_description: The seventh Mir Docking mission carried a SPACEHAB double module for the docking with Mir, cargo transfer and an astronaut exchange. The shuttle's previous Mir missions were STS-71, STS-74, STS-76, STS-79, STS-81 and STS-84.
  Highlights of the 10-day mission include five days of docked operations between Atlantis and Mir and the exchange of crew members Foale and Wolf to continue a permanent American presence of the Russia complex. A spacewalk is scheduled to retrieve the four Mir Environmental Effects Payloads which were attached to the Mir's docking module by Linda Godwin and Rich Clifford during STS-76 to characterize the environment surrounding the Mir space station. Atlantis will carry the SPACEHAB double module to support the transfer of logistics and supplies for Mir and the return of experiment hardware and specimens to Earth.
  The seventh Mir docking mission continued the presence of a U.S. astronaut on the Russian space station with the transfer of physician David A. Wolf to Mir. Wolf became the sixth U.S. astronaut in succession to live on Mir to continue Phase 1B of the NASA/Russian Space Agency cooperative effort. However, the difficulties encountered by Foale and his predecessor aboard Mir, Jerry Linenger, had resulted in intense political pressure on NASA. The final decision between the termination of NASA crewing of Mir with Foale's departure, or his scheduled replacement by David Wolf was only made by NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin the night before the launch of STS-86.
  Foale returned to Earth after spending 145 days in space, 134 of them aboard Mir. His estimated mileage logged was 58 million miles (93 million kilometers), making his the second longest U.S. space flight, behind Shannon Lucid's record of 188 days. His stay was marred by a collision on 25 June between a Progress resupply vehicle and the station's Spektr module, damaging a radiator and one of four solar arrays on Spektr. The mishap occurred while Mir 23 Commander Vasili Tsibliev was guiding the Progress capsule to a manual docking and depressurized the station. The crew sealed the hatch to the leaking Spektr module, leaving inside Foale's personal effects and several NASA science experiments, and repressurized the remaining modules.
  An internal space walk by Tsibliev and Mir 23 Flight Engineer Aleksandr Lazutkin was planned to reconnect power cables to the three undamaged solar arrays, but during a routine medical exam 13 July Tsibliev was found to have an irregular heartbeat. Foale then began training for the space walk, but during one of the training exercises a power cable was inadvertently disconnected, leaving the station without power. On 21 July, it was announced that the internal space walk would not be conducted by the Mir 23 crew but their successors on Mir 24. On 30 July, NASA announced that Wendy Lawrence, originally assigned to succeed Foale on Mir, was being replaced by Wolf. The change was deemed necessary to allow Wolf to act as a backup crew member for the space walks planned over the next several months to repair Spektr. Unlike Wolf, Lawrence could not fit in the Orlan suit that is used for Russian space walks and she did not undergo space walk training.
  Following their arrival at the station 7 August, Mir 24 Commander Anatoly Solovyev and Flight Engineer Pavel Vinogradov conducted the internal space walk inside the depressurized Spektr module 22 August, reconnecting 11 power cables from the Spektr's solar arrays to a new custom-made hatch for the Spektr. During the space walk, Foale remained inside the Soyuz capsule attached to Mir, in constant communication with the cosmonauts as well as ground controllers.
  On 5 September, Foale and Solovyev conducted a six-hour external extravehicular activity to survey damage outside Spektr and to try to pinpoint where the breach of the module's hull occurred. Two undamaged arrays were manually repositioned to better gather solar energy, and a radiation device left previously by Jerry Linenger was retrieved.
  The docking of Atlantis and Mir took place at 3:58 pm EDT, 27 September, with
caption: Launch of STS-86
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