Mir was a space station that operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, operated by the Soviet Union and later by Russia. Mir was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996. It had a greater mass than any previous spacecraft. At the time it was the largest artificial satellite in orbit, succeeded by the International Space Station (ISS) after Mir's orbit decayed. The station served as a microgravity research laboratory in which crews conducted experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology, and spacecraft systems with a goal of developing technologies required for permanent occupation of space.
Colin Michael Foale is a British-American astrophysicist and former NASA astronaut. He is a veteran of six space missions, and is the only NASA astronaut to have flown extended missions aboard both Mir and the International Space Station. He was the second Briton in space and the first to perform a space walk. Until 17 April 2008 he held the record for most time spent in space by a US citizen: 374 days, 11 hours, 19 minutes, and he still holds the cumulative-time-in-space record for a UK citizen.
STS-86 was a Space Shuttle Atlantis mission to the Mir space station. This was the last Atlantis mission before it was taken out of service temporarily for maintenance and upgrades, including the glass cockpit.
Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalev is a Soviet and Russian mechanical engineer and former cosmonaut. As a prominent rocket scientist, he is a veteran of six space flights and ranks third to Gennady Padalka and Yuri Malenchenko for the amount of time in space: a total of 803 days, 9 hours, and 39 minutes.
Anatoly Yakovlevich Solovyev is a retired Russian and Soviet cosmonaut and pilot. Solovyev was born on January 16, 1948, in Riga, Latvia. Solovyev holds the world record on the number of spacewalks performed (16), and accumulated time spent spacewalking.
The Shuttle–Mir program was a collaborative 11-mission space program between Russia and the United States that involved American Space Shuttles visiting the Russian space station Mir, Russian cosmonauts flying on the Shuttle, and an American astronaut flying aboard a Soyuz spacecraft to engage in long-duration expeditions aboard Mir.
The European Astronaut Corps is a unit of the European Space Agency (ESA) that selects, trains, and provides astronauts as crew members on U.S. and Russian space missions. The corps has 13 active members, able to serve on the International Space Station (ISS). The European Astronaut Corps is based at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany. They can be assigned to various projects both in Europe or elsewhere in the world, at NASA Johnson Space Center or Star City.
Mir EO-21 was a long-duration mission aboard the Russian Space station Mir, which occurred between February and September 1996. The crew consisted of two Russian cosmonauts, Commander Yuri Onufrienko and Yury Usachov, as well as American astronaut Shannon Lucid. Lucid arrived at the station about a month into the expedition, and left about a week following its conclusion; NASA refers to her mission as NASA-2. She was the second American to have a long-duration stay aboard Mir, the first being Norman Thagard, as a crew member of Mir EO-18; he stayed on the station for 111 days. Some sources refer to her mission as Mir NASA-1, claiming that she was the first American to have a long-duration stay aboard Mir.
The Roscosmos Cosmonaut Corps is a unit of the Russia's Roscosmos State Corporation that selects, trains, and provides astronauts as crew members for the Russian Federation and international space missions. It is part of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, based at Star Sity in Moscow Oblast, Russia.
Soviet Union / 
Russia 
United States 
France 
Germany 
Afghanistan 
Austria 
Bulgaria 
Canada 
Japan 
Slovakia 
Syria 
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