STS-71: the shuttle docks at Mir

Space Shuttle Atlantis lifts off on an almost-ten-day mission to dock with the Russian space station Mir. The first docking proves to be a chore, as the Mir crew has to move one of the station’s modules to a different docking port to accomodate the shuttle. The historic docking – the first joint operation between the two countries since the Apollo-Soyuz mission almost exactly 20 years earlier – results in the largest man-made object in space to date. Aboard Atlantis are Commander Robert Gibson, Pilot Charles Precourt, and mission specialists Ellen Baker, Bonnie Dunbar and Gregory Harbaugh; cosmonauts Anatoly Solovyev and Nikolai Budarin are transported to Mir aboard Atlantis to become part of Mir Expedition 19, while Expedition 18 crew members Norman Thagard, Vladimir Dezhurov and Gannady Strekalov return to Earth after more than three months aboard Mir.