Mir Gets an Astronaut, Not a Maid
On a day when U.S. astronauts tested jet packs for their first spacewalk at the Mir station, Shannon Lucid said Tuesday that she is happy to do her share of housekeeping but graciously brushed off suggestions by her Russian hosts that women are born to clean.
Lucid, a 53-year-old biochemist who will be aboard the aging Russian space outpost for nearly five months, became an official member of the Mir crew this week after the shuttle Atlantis docked with the Russian spacecraft. She made it clear to reporters during a video link to Earth that she would not participate in an orbiting battle of the sexes.
Russian Gen. Yuri Glazkov had suggested a few days ago that Lucid likely would perform a much-needed service on Mir: cleaning its ventilation fans. The fans “will be taken care of in a more timely manner because we know that women love to clean,” said Glazkov, who is deputy commander of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Russia.
“That kind of thinking doesn’t bother me. We all work together to keep the place pretty tidy,” Lucid told reporters.
Today’s major task will be the first-ever spacewalk by U.S. astronauts at Mir.
Astronauts Linda Godwin and Michael “Rich” Clifford plan to attach cosmic dust catchers, paint samples and other science experiments to Mir and test tools designed to fit either U.S. or Russian spacesuits.
It’s the kind of work that will be performed by spacewalkers at the future international space station.
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