1st U.S. Shuttle Flight With Russian Begins Countdown

NASA began the countdown Monday for the first U.S. shuttle flight with a Russian cosmonaut, a seasoned spaceman who will share orbital duties with an older yet less experienced American crew.

Ground crews began a three-day countdown before dawn for Discovery’s liftoff at 4:10 a.m. PST Thursday with a crew of six.

The cosmonaut, Sergei Krikalev, smiled broadly as Discovery’s pilot praised him as “a man of many talents.”

“We’re going to keep him busy on this flight,” pilot Kenneth Reightler Jr. promised after arriving at Kennedy Space Center with the rest of the six-member crew.

Mission specialists for the flight are Franklin Chang-Diaz, Jan Davis and Ron Sega.

The eight-day science mission will be only the second time Americans and Russians have flown together in space. The first was the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz docking.

Krikalev, 35, already has spent 463 days in space, nine times longer than the rest of the shuttle crew combined.

Only one other person, cosmonaut Musa Manarov, has logged more space time.

Krikalev also is a champion aerobatic pilot, mechanical engineer and computer whiz who showed commander Charles Bolden Jr. a better way to use the shuttle’s laptop computers.

Both Krikalev and his backup, Russian cosmonaut Vladimir Titov, have been treated as full-fledged crew members since arriving at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in late 1992. Titov, 47, who’s spent 368 days in space, is scheduled to fly on a shuttle early next year.

The cosmonaut shuttle flights are part of an agreement between the United States and Russia that also calls for five American astronauts to orbit on Russia’s space station Mir beginning next year. Up to 10 shuttle-Mir dockings are planned, followed in 1997 by construction of a joint space station.