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Atlantis and Mir

Photo: Shuttle docked at Mir space station

On June 29, 1995, Atlantis became the first space shuttle to dock at Russia's Mir space station. A Russian Mir-19 cosmonaut snapped this photo on July 4 after a brief scientific joyride on the Soyuz spacecraft. This mission, STS-71, had a number of additional historic firsts: It was the hundredth U.S. human space launch conducted from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and it included the largest spacewalk ever undertaken in orbit and the first on-orbit change of shuttle crew.

Photograph courtesy NASA