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

DATE: SUNDAY, February 6, 1994                   TAG: 9402060072
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MOSCOW                                LENGTH: Short

AMERICANS TO START TRAINING IN RUSSIA

American astronauts Norman Thagard and Bonnie Dunbar are to begin pre-flight training this week for a mission that will take one of them to the Russian space station Mir next year.

Either one would become the first American aboard the orbiting Russian space station.

A Russian cosmonaut, Sergei Krikalev, spent Saturday in orbit with the American crew of the space shuttle Discovery, the first in a series of U.S.-Russian space missions planned.

Discovery's eight-day mission is to end Friday.

Dunbar and Thagard are expected this week at Star City just outside Moscow for training for the March 1, 1995, mission, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

Dunbar, a veteran of three space flights, is the wife of astronaut Ronald Sega, who was among those aboard Discovery with Krikalev.

Thagard has been in space four times.

Both have been studying Russian. U.S. officials said Thagard was selected to make the flight, with Dunbar training as his backup, but ITAR-Tass said the choice would be made after training.

Either Thagard or Dunbar would remain aboard Mir for three months, returning to Earth on the space shuttle Atlantis.

Among the Russian cosmonauts preparing for the 1995 mission were Valery Dezhurov, Georgy Strekalov, Alexander Solovyov and Nikolai Budarin, ITAR-Tass said.

by CNB