Launch from Cape Canaveral (
KSC);
landing on Cape Canaveral (
KSC).
Payload was the Spacehab DM. This flight
was the seventh Shuttle-MIR mission. Following a two day solo flight the
Atlantis docked with the MIR space station on September 27, 1997. The crew
performed a common flight with the
24th MIR resident crew
(September 27, - October 03, 1997).
During the six days of docked
operations, the joint
MIR-24 and STS-86 crews transferred more than four tons of
material from the SPACEHAB Double Module to MIR, including approximately 771
kilograms (1,700 lb) of water, experiment hardware for International Space
Station Risk Mitigation experiments to monitor the MIR for crew health and
safety, a gyrodyne, batteries, three air pressurization units with breathing
air, an attitude control computer and many other logistics items. The new
motion control computer replaced one that had experienced problems in recent
months. The crew also moved experiment samples and hardware and an old Elektron
oxygen generator to Atlantis for return to Earth.
The only
EVA
in this mission by Vladimir
Titov and Scott
Parazynski was performed on October 02, 1997 (5h 01m) for
testing tools and technologies needed for the
ISS and to recover MIR Environmental Effects Payload
(
MEEP), which were attached during Mission
STS-76.
David
Wolf
replaced Michael
Foale as a member of the MIR
24th resident crew.
After the separation the Shuttle crew discovered two leaks in the
module Spektr. Other experiments conducted during the mission were the
Commercial Protein Crystal Growth investigation; the Cell Culture Module
Experiment (CCM-A), the Cosmic Radiation Effects and Activation Monitor (CREAM)
and the Radiation Monitoring Experiment-III (RME-III); the Shuttle Ionospheric
Modification with Pulsed Local Exhaust (SIMPLE) experiment; and the Midcourse
Space Experiment. Two
NASA educational outreach programs were also
conducted, Seeds in Space-II and KidSat.
The mission was extended one
day, due of high winds over the
KSCs
Shuttle Landing Facility.
