Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, February 4, 1994                   TAG: 9402040184
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Orlando Sentinel
DATELINE: CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA.                                LENGTH: Medium

SHUTTLE FLIGHT LAUNCHES ERA OF COOPERATION

But on Thursday, the shuttle Discovery rose from the launch pad a few pounds lighter than normal and veered to the northeast along the Eastern Seaboard - just so a crew member from NASA's new partner in space, Russia, could see his homeland every few orbits or so.

The change in trajectory cost Discovery about 150 pounds in cameras and other equipment - and could have required an unprecedented midcourse correction had something interrupted the countdown.

But the daybreak launch christened what the Clinton administration hopes will be a new era in cooperation between the United States and Russia, former rivals in the race for space.

"There was a lot of symbolism there," NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin said of Discovery's ascent into the bright orange sunrise and deep blue sky.

Less than a year from now, Russian cosmonaut Vladimir Titov is to fly aboard Discovery as it passes near the Russian's Mir space station.

Two months later, NASA astronaut Norm Thaggard is to become the first U.S. astronaut to fly into space atop a Russian rocket.

Thaggard is to spend about three months on Mir. Any stay longer than 84 days would break the U.S. space endurance record, held since 1973-74 by astronauts Gerald Carr, Edward Gibson and William Pogue aboard NASA's Skylab.

Thaggard is to be followed to Mir by a series of NASA astronauts, though the others will probably arrive by U.S. shuttle. Ten such flights are planned starting in June 1995.

The ultimate goal of the partnership, initiated by the Bush administration but greatly expanded by President Clinton this past summer, is the joint construction of a U.S.-Russian space station starting in 1997.

"Today was the start of a whole new era," Goldin said. "Instead of spending another 10 years of frustration making a lot of drawings and not getting anywhere, by the end of this century we're going to have an 800,000-pound station, with humans always in space from all over the world, that we can take pride in."

The 1975 rendezvous of a U.S. Apollo spacecraft and a Russian Soyuz capsule was the first and, until now, only cooperative spaceflight involving the two countries.

Thursday, however, that scene was replaced by televised pictures of Russian space veteran Sergei Krikalev in Discovery's crew cabin.

Krikalev and five NASA astronauts lifted off after the smoothest shuttle countdown in a year, one with no delays or questionable weather.

Discovery's flight is scheduled to end next Friday.