We're 1,000 miles southeast of Moscow
on the plains of Kazakhstan.
A Soyuz rocket, the 300-ton workhorse
of the Russian space program...
rolls out to the launchpad.
This is the cosmodrome at Baikonur...
a sight few western eyes have seen.
Under the old Soviet Union...
it was so secret,
it wasn't even on the maps.
Today you'll find outsiders here
for every launch.
As often as not,
a foreigner is a member of the crew.
The launch pad has a long history.
This reliable technology
has launched over 1,000 rockets.
Most were never seen by the public.
Now the days of secrecy
and suspicion are gone.
Nations of the world
are banding together...
to build the first permanent
International Space Station.
Phase One.' A series of joint missions
and crew exchanges is now under way.
Destination.'
The Russian space station MIR.
"Mir" is the Russian word for "peace."
There's a lot of hardware in orbit...
but this space station
with the hopeful name...
is the most complex of all.
It's been home
to scores of men and women...
for more than a decade.
They come and go in a Soyuz spacecraft,
docked there on the right.
In two's and three's they've lived
in that central module...
some for more than a year at a time.
At first, that was the whole of MIR.
The rest has been added over the years.
Moored on the left is Progress,
an unmanned delivery truck...
that brings up supplies.
Then it takes away the garbage...
and burns up as it enters
Earth's atmosphere.
And now, there's another visitor
to Russia 's MIR, an American citizen.'
Astronaut and scientist Shannon Lucid.
She's a veteran of four shuttle flights...
and has already logged
over 800 hours in space.
She's the first American woman
to live on MIR...
and she's very much at home.
I think I'd been up on MIR
about three months...
when the first Progress came
and we opened it up.
Then Yuri would say, "You can just smell...
"all the fresh fruit and vegetables
that are here. "
So we dug around
and we got those bags out...
and for that lunch
we had fresh tomatoes and onions.
That was one of the best meals
I have ever eaten in my life.
It was just great.
Shannon grew up in Bethany, Oklahoma.
One of the cosmonauts was born
in Russia, the other in Ukraine.
One night,
Yuri and Yuri and I were sitting...
sort of floating around,
just talking about our childhood.
Here we were, three people,
we grew up in two different countries...
and we'd been working together,
having a real good time together.
And that was just amazing to us,
how the world had changed.
We got talking about
when I was growing up...
how afraid America was of Russia...
and then they were explaining to me
how afraid Russia was of America.
The Cold War was very, very dominant
in our lives.
We would do bomb drills at school,
and go underneath our desk.
An Iron Curtain has descended
across the continent.
I remember very distinctly
the night that Stalin died.
Russia was the enemy.
America had to be strong
to be against Russia.
I remember when Sputnik was launched,
standing outside the school door...
and just thinking about the artificial
satellite going around the Earth...
I thought, "Wow! That's what I can do.
"I can go and be a space explorer,
because certainly...
"space won't be all explored
by the time I grow up. "
Says Mr. K.,
the Soviets will overtake America...
and then wave bye-bye.
Then I remember
when the first seven were selected...
and at that time, I wrote a letter
to Time magazine and I asked them.'
"Why were just males selected?"
But the Russians were first
to launch a human to space.
The new superhero.'
Yuri Gagarin.
I thought it was absolutely remarkable
that a human being could go into space.
But then, it was the feeling of.'
"Why isn't America doing this, too?"
And this generation does not intend...
to founder in the backwash...
of the coming age of space.
We mean to be a part of it,
we mean to lead it!
I actually sold my bicycle
to buy a telescope kit.
And then a friend of mine and I
spent awhile out at night...
making a map of the moon,
just like real astronomers.
Tranquility Base here,
the Eagle has landed.
That's one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind.
The space race was in the air.
More kids wanted to be astronauts
than president.
But the Cold War continued to escalate.
Never in human history had so much
death-dealing power been amassed.
But even the threat of annihilation...
couldn't smother
the human urge to explore.
In the U.S., Titan missile carriers
also launched the scientific probes...
Viking and Voyager,
to survey the planets.
Some of the Soviet rockets that
came off this weapons assembly line...
were earmarked
for space exploration, too.
Then in 1975...
the first joint U.S. -Soviet mission
in space, Apollo-Soyuz...
ignited hope for future cooperation.
As tensions cooled further,
new partnerships emerged...
and American companies began
successful joint ventures...
with the rocket builders at Krunichev.
Then, it seemed almost overnight,
the Cold War ended.
The Soviet Union was gone.
These workers woke up
in a brand new country.
The new Russia now had the MIR station.
The U.S. had the shuttle.
American and Russian leaders agreed.'
"Why not combine these great assets
and explore space together?"
Ambitious new joint missions have begun.
Astronauts are here in Russia,
training side by side with cosmonauts.
The first challenge to overcome.'
culture shock.
One of the reasons why I volunteered
for this program is that...
it would be a challenge to communicate
with somebody in a different language.
To find out a little bit
about life there in Russia.
These are the children of the new Russia.
They're also the children of cosmonauts.
Cosmonaut Vladimir Dezhurov
and his family live here in Star City.
This is the Russian space complex
in a forest on the outskirts of Moscow.
I really enjoyed my time in Star City.
It was sort of like
living on an air force base...
because it's a big complex
and it was very community oriented...
in a sense that most people walked
to wherever they were going.
They didn't drive cars.
Star City is also home...
to the only full-sized model
of the MIR station.
Now it attracts a steady stream
of American astronauts...
who are getting acquainted
with the station and how it operates.
Not only do they learn
every detail about MIR...
they do it in a different language.
In a typical day,
we started at 9.'00 in the morning...
and we would listen to everything
in Russian all day long.
There were weeks at a time
where the only English I heard...
was when we were walking
back and forth to class.
Charlie Precourt isn't Russian.
He's an American astronaut,
born in Massachusetts.
Now he's practicing in a Soyuz trainer.
I realized, when I started training
and met the Russians...
that if I couldn't go to the window
with a cosmonaut...
a guy who flew MIGs across the border
when I was on the west side flying F-15s...
and marvel at the beauty of our planet and
share that moment with him verbally...
I was probably doing myself a disservice.
Soon Charlie will share that moment
with these cosmonauts...
when the shuttle docks with MIR
for the first time.
Anatoly Solovyev, on the left,
has already logged...
more than six months in space.
Next to him is cosmonaut-engineer
Nikolai Budarin, making his first flight.
If anything goes wrong in space,
the Soyuz is their lifeboat.
Inside this centrifuge,
cosmonauts condition themselves...
for the forces they'll encounter
during launch and landing...
up to eight times Earth's gravity.
For cosmonaut and astronaut alike,
the zero-G experience is basic training.
And for a space traveler,
the training never stops.
The cosmonaut gymnasium
is a great place...
for all cosmonauts and astronauts
to get together...
especially at the end of the day.
Where is your power?
You'll find not just
Americans and Russians...
but there are people
from all different countries in Europe.'
Claudie Andre-Deshays
from the French Space Agency...
a lot of German astronauts
getting ready to fly on the MIR.
Folks from many different countries
training to fly with the Russians.
You get a chance to socialize
and compare experiences.
Anatoly and his family live
in a comfortable apartment in Star City.
I have lived in Star City for 20 years.
I have a wife and two sons,
and I have a dog.
Anatoly and Nik will train
for their shuttle launch in Texas.
Now it's their turn for some culture shock.
When we first came to Texas,
it was quite unusual for us...
that we were so popular.
Every day we were asked
to a social occasion...
and this was very pleasant for us.
This is the home of Astronaut Ellen Baker.
She and crewmate Bonnie Dunbar...
will join Charlie and the two cosmonauts
aboard Atlantis...
the first shuttle to dock with MIR.
And the handoff has been completed.
This is the first mission
to exchange Russian and American crews.
It'll bring back Norm Thagard,
the first American to live on MIR.
Norm and his cosmonaut crewmates
have been four months in space.
10, 9, 8, 7, go for main engines.
- Wow!
- Is that cool or what?
The pilot has to control
eight parameters simultaneously...
to make this a successful docking.
You have two 100-ton vehicles
that are going to collide...
and you can cause great destruction
if you don't do that exactly right.
If it is not in the right position.'
left, right, up, down, in or out...
it will not mate correctly.
But even more complex,
we had to combine our position...
our orientation, our speed
and our time of arrival...
so we would be over Russia...
for ground communications with Moscow
plus or minus two minutes.
It shows about...
three feet.
Fifty seconds.
The module looks pretty good here.
Forty seconds.
It's two feet.
Twenty-five seconds.
And we have overlap.
. 1106.
Eight inches.
- . 1 or.07?
- 106.
Four inches.
We have capture.
Mission Commander Hoot Gibson
opens the hatch.
Just the kind of thing
that was totally unexpected.
You open the hatch
and the first comment was.'
"No, you guys are upside down."
Congratulations, Space Shuttle Atlantis,
Space Station MIR.
After 20 years,
our spacecraft are docked in orbit again.
Anatoly, being the veteran cosmonaut
that he was...
had been there many times before.
For Nikolai, it had to be very exciting
because this was his first visit to the MIR.
The crew that was operating the station
when we arrived was...
the Mission Commander,
Vladimir Dezhurov...
and the "boort engineer,"
or flight engineer, Gennady Strekalov.
The base block
is the central module of MIR...
but it's also the meeting place...
very much like my kitchen
is the meeting place in my house.
There's a table and it's a gathering place...
whether it's work, whether it's a meal,
if it's just a time to relax.
That high-tech piece of equipment
is their vibration sensor...
and every time the MIR shakes,
the little bird will tweet.
Gennady and I are transferring
a tank of water...
that's been supplied
from the space shuttle, over to the MIR.
We transferred two and a half times
the original planned water transfer...
some 1,067 pounds.
We were busy as beavers during
the course of the five docked days...
bringing that stuff back and forth.
During their stay, Vladimir,
Gennady and Norm Thagard...
have consumed some 330 meals
around this table.
Treats from home are much prized,
and saved for special occasions.
This will be Norm 's last sleep on MIR.
Norm was the only American
ever to ride a Russian rocket to space.
He had studied Russian
for about three years before the flight.
We learned a lot
about the psychological aspects...
of family separation
from Norm 's stay on the MIR.
One of the things we've suggested
for the future space station.'
It's, in Russian, a "kyuta,"
which means "stateroom."
You can also see the window
which is a very nice feature...
because you could look out
and see the Earth or the stars.
Then it was Norm 's turn
to show the space shuttle...
to Vladimir and Gennady.
Particularly the Spacelab...
where they'd be doing
the in-flight testing to find out...
what the effect had been on them
of being in space that long.
We make some measurements...
to help us understand how the body
has adapted over a long period of time.
We make similar measurements
after return to Earth...
to see what the body has done
in readaptation.
We had a new system...
for seating and re-entering
the long-duration crew members.
The backs of the seats are on the floor...
and you see, we made room
for their feet in the lockers there.
This gave them a little
extra "G"protection...
and made for a very soft landing.
In 24 hours, they'll pack everything up...
the orbiter will undock from MIR,
and return home.
Anatoly used to call us "the hurricane."
He'd say that the "urahgan proshol"...
which in Russian means
"the hurricane has blown through."
When we left,
we shook hands with Anatoly and Nik...
closed the hatch, and you knew
that it got very, very quiet on their side.
It's a bittersweet moment
when you leave friends behind...
and you watch the two vehicles separate.
It's a very true thing
that the hurricane has blown through...
and you know you are saying goodbye,
and you don't really want to.
Because the shuttle has wings,
it can glide softly to a landing.
For Anatoly and Nik,
inside the smaller Soyuz capsule...
the ride back will be a lot rougher.
Anatoly does a final checkout
of their re-entry suits.
Soyuz undocks from MIR
and the two cosmonauts head for home.
They'll aim for the plains of Kazakhstan.
Soyuz isn't a glider like the shuttle.
The only way to land this spacecraft is
to parachute straight down to the ground.
You have to prepare yourself.
This is a strong impact.
To cushion the blow, they fire
retro-rockets two seconds before they hit.
The searing heat of re-entry has scorched
the outer walls of the capsule.
Inside it, Anatoly and Nik wait for help.
You have to move slowly.
You have to try not to be very active.
You have to willingly
take the help of others.
You should not try to be heroic...
because you are not used
to sudden gravity.
Anatoly's wife, Natalya,
and the boys wait for him at Star City.
Of course, you think about this moment
many, many times.
You think about
how you're going to meet...
how you're going to see each other.
I think this is difficult to express in words.
While these space travelers
have returned to their families...
others have taken their place.
As the crews have come and gone...
MIR has blossomed from a tiny outpost...
to a palace in space.
It looks sort of like a porcupine...
and you wonder what all these quills
sticking all over it might be.
Well, these are the solar arrays.
This is what provides power
to the station.
Every time anybody enters MIR
for the first time...
it really is an eye-opener
as to the lack of storage space...
and how much equipment
has accumulated up there over the years.
Imagine living in the house
that you now live in...
and you haven't thrown anything away
for over 10 years...
and then you bring in some new things.
Where are you going to put it?
With large pieces of equipment
and supplies to move...
finding your way in the maze isn't easy.
When you come into the node here...
you had to have an idea
which way you were going ahead of time...
or you could sure get turned around
as to where to go next.
Every day I would either be
on the treadmill or the ergometer.
And this was important
because we needed to make sure...
that we had a body worth coming back
to when we returned to Earth.
I lost one of my shoes
and I still needed to exercise...
so I tried exercising barefooted...
which really hurt the bottom of my feet,
running on the treadmill.
So, I offered a prize.
I said, "The person that finds my shoe...
"we will give them
an individual bag of Jell-O.
"They can have the whole bag,
all to themselves. "
That sparked a lot of interest.
After a few days,
they took up the panels on the floor...
and that's where my shoe had floated to.
The modules aren't all oriented the same.
So, you'd go from one module
into another one...
and you would be upside down
in relation to where the ceiling was...
and you'd have to reorient yourself.
The Priroda Module
is the latest addition to MIR.
It's loaded with scientific experiments
from the U.S., Europe and Russia.
The research done here today is vital...
for the planning of
the future International Space Station.
From each experiment, we learn more
about the space environment...
and how to survive
outside the shelter of Earth.
There's no water, there's no soil.
The station depends absolutely on
the resupply for its being, for everything.
There's no means of cultivating anything.
We took wheat seeds
and they started to grow.
And just before I left MIR,
the wheat seeds had formed baby seeds.
What we need to get to,
if we're ever going to go to other planets...
is the ability to grow and regenerate
in the spacecraft itself.
On this flight,
we got to see a lot more of the Earth...
than I'd ever got to see on a short flight.
When I first got up there,
a lot of the lakes were frozen...
and then over the next few weeks
you could see the ice break up.
You could see all these big land masses...
you could see them sort of green up
as crops started to grow.
I really enjoyed that.
Norm had said that it was very important
that a person have something...
that they enjoy doing in their free time.
To make the place look homey...
I took food containers
and I put them up with bungee cords...
and I put my books there.
It just made me feel nice...
like I was at home.
On the first Progress that came up, my
daughter had put a sci-fi book on there.
I really enjoyed it and I read the first book.
Then, all of a sudden, it came to an end
and the conclusion was in Part 2.
Part 2 was not there.
She had not put it in.
That was the first time that I realized,
you know, a feeling of isolation.
Then, some unexpected news from Earth.
NASA has detected a problem
with the space shuttle rocket boosters.
They were used to lift Columbia
into orbit two weeks ago.
That could mean
astronaut Shannon Lucid will be staying...
on the Russian space station MIR
longer than planned.
Atlantis is scheduled
to pick her up from MIR...
but NASA says
the glue problem may mean...
Astronaut Shannon Lucid
is temporarily stuck.
If there was a problem on MIR, where
you had to do an immediate evacuation...
the Soyuz is always there.
That's your lifeboat to get back to Earth.
No American has ever attempted
a Russian style "hard landing."
I thought about it, and actually I talked
with Yuri and Yuri about it a little bit.
I always think it's good to talk
about the possibilities that could happen.
Sometimes it is a hard landing...
but the Russians have done it
for many, many years...
so I was confident
things would be all right.
My daughter sent a message up to me.'
"Don't worry,
Dad's taking care of everything.
"He was doing the laundry last night
and he put Windex in instead of Clorox. "
So, it's the little daily things
that really keep you in contact...
with the people that you love.
It's eight long weeks
before Atlantis is cleared for launch.
Commander Bill Readdy and his crew
are ready to go.
The actual night of the launch,
when you go to the pad...
the vehicle is alive,
and the wind is blowing...
and you hear the hissing and clanking...
and the only people that are there
are the folks that strap you in.
The flight that will bring Shannon home
is now under way.
As you get closer and closer
in the rendezvous...
you need to focus on the task at hand...
which is actually to resupply the MIR
with food and clothing...
and water, and even air.
And of course,
there's Shannon that's waiting for us.
Atlantis Houston...
we have a vision of loveliness
coming down in the TV view here.
And finally you get to the moment
where you're in the docking system...
Iooking through a small window,
you can see the faces on the other side...
and you can just feel the anticipation.
But at the moment the hatch opened,
there was just almost pandemonium.
I mean, there was such joy and everything.
It was just a fantastic moment.
I got lots of reports that they laughed
more when Shannon was on board.
The first thing I saw
when Shannon was back on 79...
was that the crew around her
was laughing.
When I called them, the first thing I heard
was Shannon laughing.
So, I think her attitude is infectious...
and I think that her attitude
is one reason this mission went so well.
Now John Blaha will carry on
the work begun by Norm Thagard...
Shannon Lucid and many cosmonauts.
They are the true pioneers...
the first settlers
of this new territory beyond Earth.
Others will follow,
but this is John's room now.
It's still adorned
by Shannon's birthday balloon.
And she's left him her beloved library, too.
I told John
he was going to have a great time.
You know, just to take each day
as it comes, and enjoy that day.
There we go, clock's running.
We have good physical separation.
Looks beautiful.
Watching MIR recede...
I was saying goodbye
to my home for six months.
I was also saying goodbye to my friends.
So, it was really with mixed emotions
that I said goodbye.
The day after Shannon's landing...
President Clinton comes to Houston
to welcome her home.
Defying all predictions, after 188 days...
and more than 67 million miles in space...
Shannon stays on her feet
for the celebration.
There were many times
when I was up on MIR when I'd think.'
"Wow! Who would've ever thought
that a child from Oklahoma, in the '50s...
"would've grown up
to spend six months...
"on a Russian space station
with Russians?"
It was something you wouldn't have put
in your fiction novel...
if you were writing one.
When Dr. Lucid was in the 8th grade...
she wrote an essay saying
she wanted to be a rocket scientist.
She was told by her teacher...
there is no such thing
as a rocket scientist...
and if there were,
it wouldn't be a woman.
Our space pioneers reflect the very best...
and Dr. Shannon Lucid today...
stands tall among them all.
We are grateful for her,
we welcome her home. Thank you.
It takes a lot of learning
and a lot of knowledge...
to be able to fly humans in space.
For so many years, we did it
entirely separately from each other.
It makes so much more sense
for us to work together...
building a future
more endowed with peace...
and prosperity than with competition.
We are building a bridge to the future.
Cooperation will make it stronger.
There may be obstacles along the way...
but our children will reach the planets.
New worlds are theirs to discover.
How neat it would be
if the United States and Russia...
could cooperate and go to Mars together.
And choose us to be the crew.
I walked into my house for the first time,
it felt like I'd never been gone.
Everything looked really nice
and everything was picked up.
I mean, it was just great coming home.
A couple of the first comments
my kids made were.'
How gray my hair had gotten...
and how skinny my arms looked.
They sort of call it like it is.
English