An American shuttle docked with a Russian space station high over Earth Thursday and their commanders clasped hands joyously to celebrate an extraordinary sharing of technical skills between two former rivals.
The crew of the American ship floated into the Russian station and created a photograph for the history books that said volumes about the achievement - the first concrete step toward an international space station.Two hours after the the ships mated, Robert "Hoot" Gibson of Atlantis and Vladimir Dezhurov of Mir shook hands in a short tunnel connecting the two spacecraft to congratulate one another on the milestone.
A three-foot-long tunnel connected the ships, which together formed the largest manmade satellite ever put in space.
"How are you?" was heard again and again in a blending of two languages as the astronauts and cosmonauts from Atlantis floated into the Mir, one after the other. The airwaves were filled with happy chatter.
A formal exchange of gifts is on Friday's schedule. But, in line with Russian welcoming custom, the Atlantis crew brought three packages of chocolate, a half-dozen oranges and grapefruit, three peach-colored carnations and three silk roses. From the Mir men came traditional welcoming gifts of bread and salt.
"The first part of the adventure is over and we're waiting for the second part, which is the landing," said Gennady Strekalov, one of the cosmonauts.
"You may call it a new day for technology," said Vladimir Syromiatnikov, who designed the docking mechanism. "It was perfect. It was really perfect."
Wil Trafton, the NASA official in charge of building an international space station, said Thursday's events have "tremendous historical significance. You don't want to overstate it, but clearly everyone here understands what has happened today."
It was an especially emotional reunion for American astronaut Norman Thagard who has been on the Mir for 105 days and Dr. Bonnie Dunbar from Atlantis. The two trained together with the Russians.
It was only the second time ships from two countries joined up in space: The first was 20 years ago between an American Apollo capsule and a Soviet Soyuz.
The 10 space travelers, six Americans and four Russians, posed for pictures after they all assembled in the spacious work module of the Mir. "We have more room now than we had for Apollo-Soyuz," said Mission Control.
The Atlantis' crew of seven included a fresh pair of cosmonauts for the Russian Mir, whose three crewmen looked forward to returning to Earth next week aboard the shuttle.
Asked by the ground whether he is ready to come home, Thagard replied: "Yeah, I am. But I must say I've got mixed emotions. On the one hand you want to come home and on the other hand you think, `Well, I'd like to do this for just a little while longer.' "
The two spacecraft were 245 miles over Central Asia near the Russian-Mongolian border when Gibson eased the two ships' mating devices into first tentative contact.
"We have capture," said Gibson, precisely on time at 7 a.m. MDT. The Mir commander gave a similar message to his home base.
Because both ships had aboard Russians and Americans, the space-to-ground connections to flight controllers in Houston and Kaliningrad crackled in English and Russian. The Mir also broke the tension by playing lively Russian folk songs.
The Mir was the passive partner in the union; its only task was to stay at the proper attitude, and it did.
Television viewers around the world watched live. But the video was delayed in much of Russia, except for the far east, where news shows were on.
One screen visible to ground controllers showed the view of the approaching shuttle from the Mir. The other displayed what Gibson was seeing, a greenish target coming closer, slowly, slowly.
Cameras from Mir captured images of astronauts and cosmonauts waving and smiling from the Atlantis windows.
"It's a great feeling to be here," Gibson said. "We're lucky and we're honored and privileged to be part of this. It's great to be back joined in orbit again."
Vice President Al Gore watched the docking with Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin on a big screen at a Moscow hotel. "This is a great metaphor for our work," Gore said just hours after the two men renewed talks on economic and scientific cooperation.
With space travel becoming prohibitively expensive for either nation alone, today's effort was a step toward cooperating to build an international space station.
Gibson had the demanding task of steering the 100-ton Atlantis to within three inches of the 123-ton Mir, at a closing rate no faster than one foot in 10 seconds, while the two ships sped in tandem around the Earth at 17,500 mph.
"That sure couldn't have gone slicker," he said later.
The danger was that the two behemoth ships would bump with too much force. Damage to the pressurized hulls of the ships in the vacuum of space could be catastrophic.
"It's not an easy thing to do, but it's the kind of thing you can train to do," Gibson, a former fighter pilot and test pilot, said before the flight. "It's kind of along the lines of some of the stuff I used to do, air-to-air refueling and any of those precision tasks."
The docking tested a technique needed for building an international space station beginning in 1997. It was the first of seven dockings planned before the station construction starts.
The ships will fly twinned as a single unit for five days - 77 orbits. During that time, Thagard and his two Mir crewmates will undergo extensive medical tests, conducted by astronauts Ellen Baker and Dunbar, in a laboratory carried up in the shuttle cargo bay.
In that setting, physiological changes in the men during their extended stay in space can be evaluated more precisely. "We know some of these parameters change pretty rapidly even during re-entry, so its important to get the data while we're docked and before we land," Dunbar said Wednesday.
To separate, a mechanism will release the hooks securing the docking tunnel between the ships and springs will push them apart to a distance where the shuttle's jets can be used. The shuttle then will fly around the Mir for picture-taking.