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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 5, 1995                   TAG: 9507050104
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: HOUSTON                                LENGTH: Medium

HISTORIC SPACE LINKUP ENDS

Whirling through space at nearly five miles a second, American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts Tuesday took apart the world's largest spacecraft as easily and flawlessly as they had put it together five days ago, ending the first East-West linkup in two decades and clearing the way for future cooperative ventures.

The elaborate disassembly began early Tuesday as a Russian Soyuz spaceship carrying two Russian cosmonauts undocked from the sprawling space complex, made up of the 112-foot-long Russian space station Mir and the 122-foot-long American space shuttle Atlantis.

Moving with the delicacy of a dancer, the relatively tiny Soyuz pulled back about 200 feet to photograph for engineers and posterity the giant East-West structure against the backdrop of outer space.

Then the Atlantis joined the ballet. With eight people on board - six American astronauts and two Russian cosmonauts - the winged American spaceship undocked and moved back about 500 feet to photograph the uninhabited Mir space station and the small Russian spaceship nearby.

``This is quite a scene,'' Capt. Robert L. ``Hoot'' Gibson of the Navy, the 48-year-old commander of the Atlantis, told ground controllers in Houston as he maneuvered his craft as part of a trio of spacecraft flying in formation some 245 miles above Earth.

The Soyuz then redocked with the space station.

In the final act, the Atlantis pirouetted in a circle around the Mir and the docked Soyuz craft to photograph and closely examine them in preparation for a future rendezvous.

The shuttle astronauts, through a radio link, then said goodbye to their two Russian colleagues, speaking in Russian, ending history's most intricate space rendezvous.

Although it looked easy, the ballet was one of the most elaborate and venturesome acts in space history. Nothing so complex involving a trio of vehicles had ever before been attempted in orbit.

The Russians, eager to document the historic linkup, had come up with the idea of the Soyuz pulling out first. The spaceship normally transports cosmonauts to and from Earth.

The complex choreography worried some American ground controllers, who would have preferred to keep the orbital drama simpler and potentially safer.

But in the end, the ballet was as smooth as could be.

NASA officials praised the near perfection of the five-day linkup and said its success would help advance the Russian and American space programs.

Atlantis' flight is scheduled to end about 11 a.m. Friday at Kennedy Space Center.

by CNB