Mission to Cape Canaveral
Information About STS-86
STS-86 was the 87th space shuttle mission, the 20th flight of the Atlantis orbiter, and the seventh of nine planned Mir-docking missions.

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What Was So Special About STS-86?

This mission became important to members of the web-browsing public when the STS-86 crew's personal web pages went online in January 1997. The site won awards from all over the Net for making an unprecedented new level of accessibility to the shuttle program for the public.

Though each shuttle mission is important to whomever has a payload, relative or friend on it, this one was thrust into the spotlight by the news media since it was the next Shuttle-Mir docking after the June 25, 1997 collision between Mir and one of its Progress supply ships. All of a sudden, the world was watching the tenuous situation on Mir. The large amount of supplies that STS-86 could bring made it potentially a major factor in resolving the crisis.

I won't go into all the plain-vanilla details about this mission but, rather, will refer to other sites that do in the STS-86 References section below.

Just How Much Did They Want to Get to Mir?

If you look at the background of this mission's crew, you may come to the same conclusion. There has probably never been another bunch of people who wanted to get to Mir more than they did.

STS-86 commander Jim Wetherbee, had previously commanded STS-63 on the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1995, which was the "Mir rendezvous" mission where they proved that you could safely fly two 100+ ton spacecraft near each other in orbit. (In effect, this finally proved the concept for which the shuttle was originally intended.) But they were only testing one thing at a time so docking would be done later on STS-71, after the Russian docking equipment was delivered to NASA and installed in Atlantis. But for STS-63, after getting close enough to Mir to wave out the window at the cosmonauts, they practiced "station keeping" 30 feet from Mir for a few orbits and then Discovery had to pull away. On the STS-86 web page, Wetherbee commented that he was finally going to get to see the inside of Mir.

Vladimir Titov of the Russian Space Agency had also flown on STS-63 with Wetherbee. All his space flights prior to that were on Russian Soyuz missions and a year (1988) on Mir as its commander. It had been a while but it was probably like home for him there.

Jean-Loup Chretien of CNES, the French Space Agency, had made his previous two space flights, one to the Soviet Salyut-7 Space Station in 1982 and another to Mir for three weeks in 1988. He had trained to be a pilot of the Soviet Union's Buran Space Shuttle, which only made one unmanned flight before the program was cancelled due to budget cuts. (Isn't the whole point of a space shuttle supposed to be that it's reusable?) He undoubtedly wanted to take a shuttle to Mir.

But probably the most ironic exeriences in the crew were those of Scott Parazynski and Wendy Lawrence. Parazynski had begun training for a long-duration mission as a NASA astronaut on Mir but was bumped from the program when it was determined he was too tall to safely fit in the Soyuz spacecraft in case an emergency evacuation was needed. Lawrence had been training to be the long-duration NASA astronaut on this mission until the Mir/Progress collision made NASA and the Russian Space Agency decide that the American on board would need to help with spacewalks for repairs, and she was too short to fit in the Russian "EVA suits". The STS-86 crew's web page indicates that their nicknames from that point on were "Too Tall" and "Too Short". Lawrence stayed on the STS-86 crew even though she wasn't going to be left on Mir because she had been training also to help with the transfer of ten thousand pounds of supplies between the two spacecraft. (Apparently they have to move a lot of stuff on a short timetable so the training was important.)

Hams on the STS-86 Crew

For me as a Ham Radio operator, I noticed that there were 5 Hams on the crew.
Vladimir Titov KD5AOS (US callsign)
U1MIR (Russian callsign)
Scott Parazynski KC5RSY
Wendy Lawrence KC5KII
Dave Wolf (launch to Mir) KC5VPF
Mike Foale (return from Mir) KB5UAC
Since STS-86 was not a SAREX mission (the first Shuttle-Mir mission that wasn't) Hams wouldn't have the opportunity to talk to the shuttle itself. So it was most important to Hams that the long-duration flight crews on Mir included a Ham since there's an Amateur Radio station there. Hams want someone up there to know how to use it so we can talk to Mir. (And as John Blaha, Jerry Linnenger and Mike Foale found out during their stays on Mir, the Ham Radio is a good way to find more people to talk to.) Dave Wolf was the fourth consecutive US Astronaut on Mir who is a Ham.

Mir Long-duration Crew Exchange

STS-86's docking with Mir was the end of a 4-month stay on Mir for British-born American astronaut Mike Foale KB5UAC. Following in his place was originally scheduled to be Wendy Lawrence KC5KII. But as I mentioned in my discussion of my launch-viewing trip's planning, the crew was changed after the Mir-Progress collision since Lawrence couldn't fit in the Russian spacesuits to make space walks for repairs of the collision damage. Astronaut Dave Wolf KC5VPF was moved up from the STS-89 flight to STS-86 to take Lawrence's place.

Wolf returned to Earth aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-89, which landed safely on January 31, 1998. (That day was coincidentally also the 40th anniversary of the launch of America's first satellite, Explorer 1.) Wolf had said in an on-orbit press conference that he wanted to see his girlfriend and get a pizza after landing. Both were waiting for him as he got out of the shuttle after landing.

STS-86 References

STS-86 crew's personal web pages STS-86 was the first (and only at the time of this writing) shuttle mission where the crew put up a web page to share their experiences with the world. They updated it each week during the 9 months of training until they left Houston bound for KSC and the launch. I hope other crews will follow this excellent example in the future.
KSC STS-86 page The NASA Kennedy Space Center web people host pages with the official information of the mission, starting with their preparations to launch the vehicle. These usually have a lot of good technical information.
NASA Shuttle Web: STS-86 NASA's Shuttle Web highlights each mission as it occurs. These are the pages from STS-86.
NASA SpaceLink STS-86 page NASA SpaceLink presents NASA projects with resources for use in education.
CNN video of STS-86 launch
VXtreme (4 min, 13 sec)
QuickTime (23 sec, 992K) 		If you can view VXtreme or QuickTime video, you can watch CNN's coverage of the launch, with shuttle video provided by NASA. Keep in mind that I was watching this from the NASA Causeway viewing site 6 miles away. So you actually get closer views from different angles than we did in person. (But video still doesn't compare to being there.) One of CNN's reporters describes what he saw as Atlantis illuminated a thin layer of clouds as it approached and went through them. You can see my pictures of Atlantis launching and going through that cloud layer on my "Mission to Cape Canaveral" Day 3 page.
CNN STS-86 Launch Gallery Freeze frames by CNN selected from NASA TV video. Notice that the launch lit up the night sky like daylight - everyone photographing it had some difficulty adjusting to the sudden change of lighting.
Other CNN coverage Atlantis up and away to Mir (September 25)
Shuttle Atlantis links up with Mir (September 27 )
Shuttle crew unloads space supplies for Mir (September 28)
Shuttle undocks from Mir for trip home (October 3)
Shuttle Atlantis back on Earth (October 6)
CNES STS-86 page The French Space Agency had an interest in this mission because one of their astronauts was on board. Since the European Space Agency doesn't (yet) have manned space flight capability, every flight for one of their astronauts is on an American or Russian vehicle.
Back up to "Mission to Cape Canaveral"
by Ian Kluft <ikluft@thunder.sbay.org>