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SPACE.com Contributor to Join Veteran Cosmonauts on Mir Tracking Mission
By SPACE.com Staff
posted: 10:15 am ET
16 February 2001
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mir_track_010216 SPACE.com's Moscow contributing correspondent Yuri Karash will be joining four senior Mir cosmonauts and one of the space station's designers as part of MirReentry.com, the private American airborne expedition being organized to witness Mir's plunge into the south Pacific. The deorbiting of the space station is scheduled to occur between March 13-18. The six Russians are: - Sergey Avdeyev, a cosmonaut who flew three missions to Mir, one of which lasted over a year;
- Vladimir Titov, who spent a total of 387 days, 52 minutes, 18 seconds in space and has logged a total of 18 hours, 48 minutes doing spacewalks;
- Elena Kondakova, a flight engineer aboard Soyuz and Mir. She was in space from October 4, 1994 through March 22, 1995;
- Sergey Zaletin, the cosmonaut commander of the final mission to Mir;
- Leonid Gorshkov, one of Russia's premier space station designers and one of the chief architects of Mir;
- Karash, an aerospace advisor to the governor of the Moscow Region industrial area, has himself gone through cosmonaut training and is an expert on the Russian space program, as well as a leading space historian and journalist.
"We are very excited that our Russian colleagues are dispatching such a distinguished team of Mir cosmonauts and Russian space experts to join our reentry observation," expedition organizer and Los Angeles attorney Rick Citron said in a press release. "Having our Russian friends on board will not only make this a more historic expedition but it will add a dimension of poignancy and drama to our experience.'' The Russian cosmonauts on board the MirReentry.com observation plane will be in direct communication with the Korylov Mission Control Center in Moscow during the final phase of the Mir deorbit. Rick said the aircraft will be directed to the best safe location to observe the reentry.
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