KSC-97PC849

Veteran cosmonaut Valery Ryumin greets his wife, STS-84 Mission Specialist Elena V. Kondakova, with some flowers after the Space Shuttle orbiter Atlantis lands on KSC’s Runway 33. STS-84 was the sixth docking of the Space Shuttle with the Russian Space Station Mir. The nine-day STS-84 mission was Kondakova’s second space flight, but her first on the Space Shuttle. She spent 169 days in space as flight engineer of the 17th main mission on Mir from October 1994 to March 1995. Her husband is now director of the Mir-Shuttle program for Russia