International Space Station: First Step

n 1993, Russia joined the USA and its partners in the largest cooperative space exploration effort in history - the International Space Station. This documentary covers the following stages of the process: -Gore and Chernomyrdin signing the 1993 treaty; -the STS-60 mission, launched in February 1994, a NASA mission which included a Russian cosmonaut, Sergei Krikalev; footage of in-flight biomedical investigations; -the February 1995 STS-63 mission, involving a rendezvous between the Russian space station Mir and the American shuttle Orbiter; various footage of both craft, astronauts waving, Russian and American mission control centres; -the Mir 18 mission, launched on March 14th 1995, during which an American astronaut (Norm Thagard) stayed onboard the Mir for three and a half months; the launch, Thagard aboard Soyuz rocket, being welcomed aboard the shuttle, in-flight biomedical experiments and EVA; -the STS-71 mission - docking of the Orbiter American space shuttle with Mir: the vehicles, docking capture, shaking hands, the crews holding a ceremony consisting of 'docking' models of the vehicles, Mir above Earth and Atlantis landing; -the November 1995 mission to install a permanent docking module onto Mir; the docking procedure, the crews (of ESA, Canada, America and Russia), closing the hatch and shaking hands; -the STS-76 mission, involving another docking between Atlantis and Mir; American astronauts spacewalk outside the Russian space station, installation of Mir Environmental Effects payload onto the docking module, and various in-flight shots of crew and vehicles, including an animation of the proposed International Space Station.