Word: spacecrafts
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...second time in four months, American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts shook hands in space after the shuttle Atlantis and space station Mir docked flawlessly at 1:27 a.m. EST. The two crews represent four countries (the United States, Russia, Canada and Germany), a record for a single spacecraft. "We've never done anything quite like this," says TIME aerospace correspondent Jerry Hannifin. "Flying over Russia and in range of a Russian control station, the Atlantis crew maneuvered the 100-ton shuttlecraft, with this big docking tunnel sticking 15 feet out of its payload bin, very slowly -- at the rate...
...looking forward, with great anticipation, to this opportunity to gain unprecedented results from the crystallization of biological macromolecules in gels in microgravity spacecraft," Thiessen said...
Thiessen will also have experiments on the first flight of METEOR, a 27-day, unmanned recovery spacecraft, scheduled to launch on August 10 from Wallops Island, Virginia...
Atlantis climbed quickly into a matching orbit with Mir and, over the next day or so, slowly closed a 4,000-mile gap with its target. Thursday morning, with the spacecraft 250 ft. apart and orbiting through space at 17,500 m.p.h., Gibson and shuttle pilot Charles Precourt began the delicate and risky maneuvers aimed at linking the two great ships. One careless burst of a thruster jet, and Mir's feathery solar panels could be destroyed; too forceful a bump from Atlantis, and either or both craft could be severely damaged. And if Gibson and Precourt couldn't align...
...there was not much to distinguish this space spectacular from the dead-end Apollo-Soyuz mission. Astronauts and cosmonauts drank toasts, exchanged symbolic gifts (flowers, candy and fruit for the crew on Mir; the traditional Russian hospitality offering of bread and salt for the Americans), toured each other's spacecraft and issued properly portentous statements about cooperation in space--as did officials on the ground, including Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin...