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ArchivesText SizeSTS-91 Mission: Ninth and Final Shuttle-Mir Docking
Space Shuttle: Discovery
Launch Pad: 39A 
Launched: June 2, 1998, 6:06:24 p.m. EDT
Landing Site: Kennedy Space Center, Florida
Landing: June 12 1998, 2:00:18 p.m. EDT
Runway: 33
Rollout Distance: 11,730 feet
Rollout Time: 64 seconds
Revolution: 155
Mission Duration: 9 days, 19 hours, 54 minutes, 2 seconds
Orbit Inclination: 51.6 degrees
Miles Traveled: 3.8 million 

Crew Members

                    

Image above: STS-91 Crew photo with Commander Charles J. Precourt, Pilot Dominic 
L. Pudwill Gorie, Mission Specialists Wendy B. Lawrence, Franklin R. Chang-Diaz, 
Janet L. Kavandi and Valery Victorovitch Ryumin. Image Credit: NASA 

Launch Highlights

 The countdown proceeded smoothly except for a slight delay in operations to 
load the external tank with cryogenic propellant to evaluate a few technical 
issues. As planned, launch managers determined the exact orbital location of the 
Mir space station during the countdown's T-9-minute built-in hold. The decision 
was then made to launch Discovery at 6:06 p.m. to achieve optimum shuttle system 
performance and to accommodate Shuttle-Mir rendezvous activities.

Mission Highlights

Docking of Discovery to Mir, the first for that orbiter, occurred at 12:58 p.m., 
June 4, at an altitude of 208 miles. Hatches opened at 2:34 p.m. the same day. 
At hatch opening, Andy Thomas officially became a member of Discovery's crew, 
completing 130 days of living and working on Mir. The transfer wrapped up a 
total of 907 days spent by seven U.S. astronauts aboard the Russian space 
station as long-duration crew members. During the next four days, the Mir 25 and 
STS-91 crews transferred more than 1,100 pounds of water, and almost 4,700 
pounds of cargo experiments and supplies were exchanged between the two 
spacecraft. During this time, long-term U.S. experiments aboard the Mir were 
moved into Discovery’s middeck locker area and the SPACEHAB single module in the 
orbiter's payload bay, including the Space Acceleration Measurement System 
(SAMS) and the tissue engineering co-culture (COCULT) investigations, as well as 
two crystal growth experiments. The crews also conducted Risk Mitigation 
Experiments (RMEs) and Human Life Sciences (HLS) investigations. When the 
hatches closed for undocking at 9:07 a.m., June 8, and the spacecraft separated 
at 12:01 p.m. that day, the final Shuttle-Mir docking mission was concluded and 
Phase 1 of the International Space Station (ISS) program came to an end.

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) flew for the first time on this mission. 
The AMS, designed to look for dark and missing matter in the universe, was 
powered up on Flight Day 1. Data originally planned to be sent to ground 
stations through Discovery's KU-band communications system was recorded onboard 
because of a problem with the KU-band system that prevented it from sending 
high-rate communications, including television signals, to the ground. The 
system was able to receive uplink transmissions. On June 3 the crew was able to 
set up a bypass system that allowed AMS data to be downlinked via S-band/FM 
communications when the orbiter came within range of a ground station. Data that 
could not be recorded by ground stations was recorded onboard throughout the 
mission.

The KU-band system failure was determined to be located in a component that was 
not accessible to the crew. The failure prevented television transmission 
throughout the mission. Television broadcasts from Mir were prevented by a 
problem between a Russian ground station and the mission control center outside 
of Moscow, limiting communications to audio only on NASA television. 

Other experiments conducted by the shuttle crew during the mission included a 
checkout of the orbiter's robot arm to evaluate new electronics and software and 
the Orbiter Space Vision System for use during assembly missions for the ISS. 
Also onboard in the payload bay were eight Get Away-Special experiments, while 
combustion, crystal growth and radiation monitoring experiments were conducted 
in Discovery's middeck crew cabin area.

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