Paper Session II-B - Phase I Lessons for the New Era

The Shuttle-Mir Program, officially known as the Phase 1 Program, was the premier international human space flight program. It involved 9 docking flights of the Space Shuttle to the Russian Mir Space Station, 7 long duration stays by US crew on the Mir, almost 1000 days of US crew occupancy of the Mir, and numerous scientific and engineering research activities. Phase 1 was also the source of numerous lessons learned that are being applied to the International Space Station to improve its safety, efficiency, and productivity as a research facility. These include learning to work with an international partner, improvements to experiment design and planning, hardware design risk mitigation, and first hand experience handling many of the most critical safety and operational issues confronting a space station. This paper will briefly cover the major contributions of the Phase 1 Program to ISS and subsequent cooperative space ventures