From foes to friends

Abstract

On 8 February 1994, the ABC television programme Good Morning America broadcast a live link-up between three Russians aboard the Mir space station - cosmonauts Viktor Afanasyev, Yuri Usachev and Valeri Polyakov - and the sixmember STS-60 crew of Space Shuttle Discovery. The time was 7:38 am EST and Mir was flying high above the southern United States, whilst the orbiter was somewhere over the Pacific. The political situation between the two nations had thawed substantially in recent years, but it was still a noteworthy event. Most noteworthy of all was the fact that in addition to five American members of the Shuttle crew … was a Russian cosmonaut, 35-year-old Sergei Krikalev. The following day, Krikalev and STS-60 commander Charlie Bolden received a telephone call from Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. During the exchange, Chernomyrdin invited the entire crew to come to Russia, as guests of President Boris Yeltsin, upon their return to Earth.