Endeavour flew the eighth Shuttle-Mir docking in January 1998, continuing the exchange of long-duration crew members as the programme neared its end. The mission delivered astronaut Andy Thomas to Mir — the last American to take up residence aboard the Russian station — and brought home David Wolf from his months in orbit.
The seven-person crew transferred tons of water, supplies and experiments between the spacecraft over the docked days. By now these missions had become a well-practised routine, and that routine was itself the point: NASA had used Mir to learn how to sustain crews for months at a time, how to conduct joint operations with Russia, and how to move cargo and people between vehicles — all skills about to be tested on the far larger International Space Station.
Endeavour docked with Mir in January 1998 to deliver Andy Thomas and recover David Wolf, the second-to-last of the American residencies. Wolf had spent four months aboard during the difficult period following the collision, living with a station that had lost a module and much of its power.
Thomas, Australian-born and the last American to live on Mir, arrived to find his Russian-made spacesuit did not fit properly — a problem with real consequences, since without a usable suit he could not have evacuated in an emergency or worked outside. A replacement was sorted out, but the episode captured the improvised character of the whole arrangement.
The flight transferred several tonnes of supplies and returned experiment samples accumulated over the programme. By this point the partnership had become genuinely routine — the ninth docking, the seventh crew exchange, conducted with a fraction of the anxiety that had surrounded the first — which was precisely the outcome the programme had been set up to achieve.
