When the Soviet Union collapsed, the space agencies of the United States and Russia began working together like never before. The culmination of the new partnership was the Shuttle-Mir program, a mission that took place over several years and saw American astronauts working together on the Mir space station alongside their Russian counterparts. The program became the first step toward establishing the International Space Station, a permanent home in space built by the US, Russia, Japan, and Europe. From Cold War tensions to the escalating space race, here’s how the groundbreaking mission came to be.
The Cold War and the Space Race
When the fighting of World War II was over, an entirely new conflict began between the Allied forces of the United States and the Soviet Union. This Cold War increased in scale from the start of the 1950s, and competition between both sides reached the boundaries of space. Primarily, the space race was used by both the US and the Soviet Union to display their superior technology and military capabilities.
The first stage of the space race was concerned primarily with rocket technology, as both sides wanted to demonstrate their ability to put nuclear weapons into orbit and thus circumvent the conventional defense capabilities of either side. This stage of the space race began in earnest when the Soviets launched Sputnik 1 using an international ballistic missile on October 4, 1957. Sputnik 1 was significant as it was the first man-made satellite to orbit the Earth.
The United States responded in 1958 by launching its own satellite designed by Wernher von Braun, the father of modern rocketry. The launch of the Explorer 1 satellite was followed by President Dwight Eisenhower’s foundation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to oversee America’s efforts in space.
The Race to the Moon
After the USSR and the United States had successfully launched artificial satellites into orbit, the next stage of the space race sought to put the first person in space and beyond. The Soviets stunned the world in 1959 when they announced they had launched the first Lunar probe, the Luna 2, to study the moon.
Just a few years later, in 1961, the Soviets shocked the world once again when Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth aboard the Soviet spacecraft Vostok 1. Meanwhile, NASA engineers were hard at work on Project Mercury, a program that aimed to put a person in Earth’s orbit aboard a lightweight and compact capsule. While still significantly behind the Soviets, NASA managed to put the first American into space aboard a Mercury craft just a few months after Gagarin had returned to Earth.
In response to Soviet gains in the space race, President John F. Kennedy declared that his administration would task NASA with landing a human on the moon by the end of the 1960s. This was followed up by astronaut John Glenn, who became the first American to orbit the Earth in early 1962. This successful mission laid the foundations of NASA’s moonshot program, Project Apollo, which came into effect by the end of that year.
In order to achieve his administration’s lofty ambitions, President Kennedy more than doubled NASA’s federal budget between 1961 and 1964. However, the 1960s proved to be an incredibly challenging decade for both contenders in the space race. In the United States, the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 shook the nation, followed by a devastating incident in 1967 in which several NASA astronauts were killed during a training exercise.
The Soviet Union and their own plans for a crewed lunar mission were hampered by the regime change from Nikita Khrushchev to Leonid Brezhnev and the death of the mastermind behind the Soviet space program, Sergey Korolyo, in 1966.
Against all odds, NASA successfully launched the first crewed mission to the moon, Apollo 8, in December 1968. Less than half a year later, Apollo 11 was launched, and on July 20, 1969, American astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon’s surface. While the Soviets continued with their plans for a lunar program, the success of Apollo 11 and a number of catastrophic failures of the Soviet N1 rocket meant that no Soviet cosmonaut ever landed on the moon.
Apollo-Soyuz: The End Of Space Race?
Despite the USSR’s early success in the space race, at the start of the 1970s, America’s continuing Apollo program meant that NASA was the clear winner. However, the Soviets still maintained a robust space program despite NASA’s victory, and as the two nations continued to explore space, a sense of joint collaboration in exploring the final frontier began to emerge.
One of the first signs of easing Cold War tensions in space was the historic Apollo-Soyuz space mission. In 1975, just a few years after Neil Armstrong had landed on the moon, NASA and the Soviet space agency collaborated on a joint mission that saw three American astronauts dock with a Soviet Soyuz space capsule. One of the high points of this mission, and perhaps the most enduring sign that Cold War tensions had begun to ease, was a handshake in space between the two mission commanders, Thomas Stafford and Alexei Leonov, which was broadcast live to millions of people watching at home.
The Soviet Space Station Mir
After its failure to reach the moon, the Soviet space agency shifted its focus toward building and maintaining manned orbital space stations. The most significant outpost built by the Soviets was the legendary space station Mir. Mir was the first space station built using specifically designed modules that were launched into orbit and assembled over the course of a decade. Significantly, the space station also survived the collapse of the Soviet Union itself as construction began in 1986 and was finally completed in 1996.
During its time in orbit, Mir was used to study the effects of prolonged space flight on the human body and conduct long-term astronomical experiments. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the newly formed Russian Federal Space Agency took over command of the Mir space station. With the end of the Cold War, Mir became a hub for a new series of international collaborations in space, the most notable of which was the Shuttle-Mir mission, which paved the way for the International Space Station.
Shuttle-Mir Program: The First Step Toward the ISS
The Shuttle-Mir program began to take shape in 1992 when US President George Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a joint agreement that would enable collaboration in the field of space exploration. The agreement was further expanded in 1993 when both NASA and ROSCOSMOS signed an additional agreement to work towards the construction of the International Space Station.
While the Apollo-Soyuz handshake in space may have signaled the beginning of the end of the Cold War space race, the Shuttle-Mir program was the first step towards a new post-Soviet space age. The program consisted of eleven joint space missions between the Russian space agency and NASA that saw the newly built Space Shuttle docking with Mir station. Notably, the Shuttle-Mir program also saw Russian cosmonauts flying onboard NASA’s space shuttle and a US astronaut becoming a part of the Mir crew for an extended period of time.
The Shuttle-Mir program was known as “Phase One” by NASA and Russia’s space agency. It was designed to build a new working relationship between the two space agencies with the aim of long-term collaboration. The first mission of the Shuttle-Mir program was launched in 1994, and over a four-year period, eleven missions were carried out, and NASA astronauts spent over one thousand days at the Mir station.
During the Shuttle-Mir program, the American government also helped Russia launch two additional Mir modules, Spektr and Priroda. These were partially funded by NASA and used by American astronauts during their stay. The program paved the way for the design and construction of the International Space Station, which became known as “Phase Two.”
Phase Two: The ISS
When NASA astronauts returned to Earth on board the Space Shuttle Atlantis in 1998, the first phase of Russia and America’s long-term vision for space exploration was complete. Phase two began shortly afterward, with the initial construction of the International Space Station.
The arrival of the Destiny Laboratory Module in 2001 marked the end of this phase and the beginning of Phase Three, the construction of the station’s observation and habitation modules, which was completed in 2012.
By 2015, the American section of the ISS was reconfigured to accommodate commercial crew vehicles such as the SpaceX Crew Dragon and the Boeing Starliner. Today, the ISS is the largest spacecraft ever built, featuring five laboratories and living modules that can support up to six crew members.
With a living space of 332 cubic meters and an overall weight of 400,000 kilograms, the ISS is almost twice the size of the space station Mir. Research conducted on the ISS has provided NASA and space agencies worldwide with valuable insights for planning future missions to the Moon and Mars.
Following the retirement of Mir station on March 23, 2001, the ISS became the only space station in Earth’s orbit until the launch of the Chinese Tiangong-1 space laboratory in September 2011.
The enduring legacy of the historic Shuttle-Mir mission lives on in the ISS, which fosters cooperation among five space agencies and prepares for future missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
