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June 22, 2020 - Another Handshake in Space

Another Handshake in Space  In 1994, the United States and Russia began a series of joint missions known as Shuttle-Mir. The project began with a Russian cosmonaut, Sergei Krikalev, flying on a shuttle mission, but it progressed to regular shuttle dockings and crew exchanges with the Mir space station. The first Shuttle-Mir docking mission began 25 years ago this week. Three days after the launch of the STS-71 mission, the space shuttle Atlantis docked with Mir. Atlantis (seen here from a viewing port on Mir) brought home three Mir veterans who had been on board for over three months, and dropped off two cosmonauts to take their place. The historic STS-71 mission came almost exactly 20 years after the first U.S.-Soviet docking in space, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, which took place in July 1975.

Image credit: NASA

Weekly Calendar

June 22 - 28, 2020

Holidays - Sky Events - Space History

 

Moon phase Monday 22

1675: Royal Greenwich Observatory founded
1973: 28-day Skylab 2 mission ends
2000: NASA announces evidence of present-day liquid water on Mars

Moon phase Tuesday 23

Neptune stationary

Moon phase Wednesday 24

St. Jean Baptiste Day (Québec)

Venus stationary

1999: FUSE spacecraft launched

Moon phase Thursday 25

1894: Hermann Oberth born
1992: STS-50 Columbia launched
1997: Progress spacecraft collides with Mir Spektr module
1999: Gemini North telescope dedicated

Moon phase Friday 26

1730: Charles Messier born
1914: Lyman Spitzer, Jr born
1963: Syncom 2 satellite launched
1984: First space shuttle launch pad abort (STS-41D)

Moon phase Saturday 27

1982: STS-4 Columbia launched
1995: STS-71 Atlantis launched
1997: NEAR-Shoemaker probe flies by asteroid Mathilde
2013: IRIS spacecraft launched
2018: Hayabusa2 spacecraft arrives at asteroid Ryugu

Moon phase Sunday 28

First Qtr Moon 4:16 AM ET

Suggestions for new history dates or better links? Corrections for errors on this page? Please e-mail me.