On Sept. 19, 1996, the space shuttle Atlantis rendezvoused with Russia's Mir space station to deliver supplies and equipment.
The mission also picked up NASA astronaut Shannon Lucid, who had spent a record-breaking 188 days aboard the orbiting laboratory. In exchange, they dropped off another NASA astronaut, John Blaha, who would spend the next four months aboard the space station. STS-79 was the first shuttle mission to visit the Mir space station since its construction was completed, and it was the fourth shuttle mission to dock to the Mir space station.
Using lasers and video cameras as guidance, Atlantis seamlessly docked with Mir, and the astronauts delivered necessary food, water, clothes and science experiments to the crew on board.
Why it mattered
The arrival at Mir of NASA's space shuttle Atlantis during STS-79 marked the first time a U.S. crewmember was exchanged on the Russian space station, with Lucid ending her mission with a trip home on Atlantis while Blaha took her place.
For Lucid, it was a record-setting mission. At the time, the 188-day mission was the longest space trip by an American woman. She had launched to Mir on the STS-76 mission (also on Atlantis) about six months earlier on March 22, 1996.
STS-79 was also only the second time a NASA shuttle carried the SPACEHAB module in its payload bay, it was the first time the SPACEHAB was used in its "Double Module" configuration in order to carry more supplies, NASA has said.
Astronaut William Readdy commanded the STS-79 mission for NASA, with Terrence Wilcutt as pilot. Astronauts Jerome Apt, Thomas Akers and Carl Walz rounded out the crew as mission specialists alongside Blaha and Lucid. Russian cosmonauts Valery Korzun, Mir 22 commander, and Alexander Kaleri, flight engineer, were the core Mir crew at the time.
Atlantis spent five days docked at the Mir space station. During that time, its crew transferred 4,000 pounds (1,814 kilograms) of supplies to Mir. That gear included food, water, as well as three new experiments for the Mir crew. About 2,000 pounds (907 kg) of experiment samples and other gear were tranferred to Atlantis from Mir, making the entire cargo delivery to and from Mir the most amount of supplies transferred at the time. The shuttle also tested an Active Rack Isolation System (designed to protect experiments on a spacecraft from vibrations) for the first time.
While STS-79 was the fourth shuttle mission to dock at Mir, it wouldn't be the last. Five more docking missions would follow during NASA and Russia's joint Shuttle-Mir program. Together, the missions set the stage for what has become the International Space Station, which has flown international crews to and from the orbiting lab on American and Russian spacecraft for nearly 27 years.
Want more space history? Check out our full On This Day In Space Story archive and watch our On This Day In Space videos on YouTube.
