KSC-97PC1342

STS-86 Mission Specialist Vladimir Georgievich Titov grins broadly for photographers after he and other crew members arrive at KSC’s Shuttle Landing Facility for the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test (TCDT), a dress rehearsal for launch. This will be the fifth spaceflight, second aboard the Space Shuttle, for Russian cosmonaut Titov, who is a colonel in the Russian Air Force. On STS-86, he will become the first non-American astronaut to perform a Shuttle-based extravehicular activity or spacewalk. STS-86 will be the seventh docking of the Space Shuttle with the Russian Space Station Mir, on which Titov spent a then-record 366 consecutive days in space in 1987-88. STS-86 is targeted for a Sept. 25 launch aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis