LIFE-SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS DURING THE GERMAN-RUSSIAN MIR 97 MISSION

Manned spaceflight has been an important element of the German space p rogram over the last decades. This is demonstrated by the nationally m anaged space missions Spacelab D-l (1985), D-2 (1993). and MIR '92 as well as by the participation in the Ist Spacelab mission FSLP (1983), the NASA missions IML-1 (1992) and IML-2 (1994), as well as in the ESA missions EUROMIR '94 and '95. On February 12th, this year, the German cosmonaut Reinhold Ewald was launched together with his Russian colle agues Wasilij Zibliew and Alexander Lasudkin onboard of a Soyuz spacec raft for another stay of a German cosmonaut onboard of the Russian Spa ce Station MIR. This mission - the so-called German/Russian MIR '97 - was, of course, another cornerstone with regard to the cooperation bet ween Russian and German space organizations. The cooperation in the ar ea of manned missions began 1978 with the flight of the German cosmona ut Sigmund Jahn onboard of Salyut 6, at that time a cooperation betwee n the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic in the frame of the Interkosmos Program. In March 1992. it was followed by the flight of Klaus Dietrich Flade with his stay onboard of MIR. After two furthe r successful ESA missions. EUROMIR '94 and '95 with the two German cos monauts Ulf Merbold and Thomas Reiter and with a marked contribution o f German scientists, the decision was taken to perform another German/ Russian MIR mission, the so-called MIR '97. In Germany: MIR '97 was ma naged and performed in a joint effort between several partners. DARA. the German Space Agency., was responsible for the overall program and project management, while DLR. the German Aerospace Research Establish ment, was responsible for the cosmonaut training, for medical operatio ns, for the mission control at GSOC in Oberpfaffenhofen as well as for user support. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.