 We have it Charlie and that is just spectacular. We see the station clearly through the pedals of the docking ring. At the top of the Mir space station is the Soyuz capsule used by at the top of the space station is the Soyuz capsule. We have a beautiful picture we see you zooming in now. This splits green view now on the left side showing the extended docking ring above the orbiter docking system and the right hand view again showing the center line camera view from the orbiter docking system as it looks at the blinking lights along the crystal modules docking port. This is mission control Houston as the shuttle Atlantis and the Mir space station pass across the southern tip of South America. Our first views of the shuttle has taken from the Mir and relayed to the United States. We have video from the Mir spacecraft looking at you. Atlantis is currently passing over Tierra del Fuego on the southern tip of South America. U.S. astronaut Norm Thaggert is manning the camera here providing this television view. Again Atlantis will stop at a point 30 feet from the Mir space station for five additional minutes of station keeping at which point flight director Bob Castle here in Houston and Russian flight director Victor Blagoff in Kaliningrad will take one final assessment of the status of their two vehicles before proceeding on for the docking which is now less than 15 minutes away. Atlantis about two minutes away from re-initiating its final approach to the Mir space station time to docking less than seven minutes. This picture of the orbiter docking system it is ready for contact and capture with the crystal modules docking mechanism. And this television now from the shuttle Atlantis showing a split screen. On the left side the orbiter docking systems docking ring at the bottom of the picture at the top is the crystal modules docking port. The picture on the right side shows the center line camera view out of the orbiter docking system. Atlantis 16 feet from the Mir time to docking two minutes 45 seconds. This picture now from the Mir space station showing the approach of the two docking mechanisms toward each other. Atlantis 10 feet from the Mir time to docking one minute 50 seconds. Atlantis eight feet away Hoot Gibson edging Atlantis at a rate of less than one tenth of a foot per second. A space shuttle and a space station now six feet from each other time to docking one minute five foot. Flight controllers here standing by for contact and capture of the two vehicles against one another. With the capture initiated between Atlantis and Mir 20 years after Apollo so used a US spacecraft or once again joined an orbit. Commander Vladimir Dujurov aboard the Mir also confirms capture. Mechanical systems officer here reports that the two docking mechanisms are now aligned. The docking ring on Atlantis should be retracted shortly. Once fully retracted the structural mating of the hooks and latches on both sides of the docking interfaces will be underway. This television view from the Mir space station showing Mir 19 cosmonauts Anatoly Soloviev and Nikolai Boudarin waving out the windows. We see you guys smiling in the window. Soloviev and Boudarin just a few hours away from moving into the Mir space station to take over control of the Mir from their colleagues, Commander Vladimir Dujurov, Flight Engineer Gennady Strekeloff and cosmonaut researcher Norm Thagger, the first US astronaut to fly on the Mir. Congratulations Space Shuttle Atlantis, Space Station Mir. After 20 years our spacecraft, our docked in orbit again. Our new era of space exploration has begun. It's a great feeling to be here. It's a massive team effort and many people have pulled together to make this happen. We're lucky and we're honored and privileged to be part of this. It's great to be back joined in orbit again. Hear you loud and clear. I'm still saving a high-five Sunday for you, it'll be really hard to grab when you land. Well, we're looking forward to that sir, thanks. I tell you this has really been an emotional experience for me, it's just a wonderful dream come true. We started working on this in June of 1992. We finalized the conceptual design in October of 93. And we've had the formal wedding of the United States and Russian space in June of 95. This live television now coming from payload bay cameras aboard Atlantis looking at the docked interface between the Kristall module and the Shuttle's orbiter docking system looking at cameras at the front of the payload bay looking aft. Atlantis Houston, we show vestuable pressurization complete. And please coordinate with the mirror crew for the leak check. Okay, Dave, we'll look at that. Atlantis Houston, AOS, Tidris West. That they view the mirror folks have opened their hatch and they're in the process of removing the lights and the standoff cross-target and that sort of stuff. Copy, the mirror hatch is open, concur. May I have a norm? I'll get here first. Yeah, 1-38, it's the steps for removing the standoff cross and the lights. I can barely hear you. Procedure it's on 1-38 for removing the cross and the lights. Roger. Procedure. Procedure. We concur, we have a good image of you. You go to open the shuttle hatch. Okay, here it goes. A lot easier without gravity. To the left. To the right. Even more, open more. More light. Yes, more light, the middle is the ground. You said it. The camera will leave, God, come on, come on, Volodya, Volodya, who can hear me? I can hear you, Volodya! We have two and a half minutes left. And the SSR is running out. We are going to take you to the base block and start the next SSR. As Igor told you. Yes, I understand. After that, we are going to take off the SSR 319 at the end of the session. And this television from the shuttle perspective. On the left is Amir 19 commander Anatoly Soloviev, Flight Engineer Gennady Strekeloff of the Mir 18 crew in the blue suit. In between them is Amir 19 Flight Engineer Nikolai Boudarin in the mustache in the background. This is old home for Anatoly Soloviev. This is his fourth flight to the Mir space station. Prior to the launch of Atlantis on Tuesday, Soloviev had logged 378 days in orbit. Atlantis commander Hood Gibson on the right. There are pictures being taken and video being shot of the initial entrance by Atlantis' crew into the Mir space station. All of the crew members will be positioned shortly to begin a brief welcoming ceremony. It's a great image from here too, Dave. This is quite a view and quite an experience. A wonderful culmination to an awful lot of work on a lot of people's parts. The rest of the crew members now congregating. We concur and it looks like you're all thoroughly enjoying yourself. We're just having no fun at all. I think we have a lot of work and a lot of science for the rest of this mission. Dave, I don't know if you've heard Gennady, but Gennady said the first part of the adventure is over and we're waiting for the second part, which is the landing. I guess in actuality there will be many, many, many second parts. Copy that loud and clear. We have a long history in front of us and a lot of accomplishments to make. A little more room now than we had with Apollo Soyuz. That's for sure, Dave. We had kind of tight quarters right at the actual contact point, but as you can see, we have a whole lot more room here in the base spot. Anyway, I give my best to everybody there and it's good to talk with you and it'll be good to see everybody when we land. That's great and it'll be another great welcoming ceremony then. Dave, we were wondering if maybe you might be able to count heads at this point and see if we've got everybody here. We think we have everybody here. That's a lot of people in space at one time. We'll count it up. We count 10 people in view. Hello, everybody's waving back. That's great, Dave. Your families are all waving from the viewing room. I'm very happy to welcome you on board this P6S-21. There are so many astronauts and astronauts on board. There's never been an orbital complex like this before. So I'm very happy to see them. It's a meeting and this flight will not just be a regular meeting. It will also be a political step for our people in Russia and America. I'm very pleased to see very happy people at the station. I think our work will be done very well and in full. Thank you. Thank you, Volodya. It's been a long, long time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We have maybe about one thing left and that's to see if they're going to let us, if we can plant our sticker somewhere here. We may not be allowed to, but we're going to take a look and see if we can put our sticker up. Copy you. We have six more minutes until Tidra's hand over. Okay, we're back with you. Okay, great. We see you too. Okay, we have a great image of the Joint Patch from the U.S. Russian Space Program. We'd all like to tell you how inspiring it was to watch our country's two great spacecraft dock together out there and just their beautiful spacecraft. We agree. This was a pretty spectacular day for all of us and it was a real thrill for us to get to see the mirror floating freely out there as it has done for so many years now and after all the training and the preparation, it seems hard to believe that we're actually there, but indeed we are. Yes, Ellen, we have two additional steps. We'd like to give a try on here when you're ready to copy. All right, first we'd like you to check the connections on the RS-232 between the MGAS and the computer. Check those connections. And following that, try the try icon again. This is Mission Control Houston aboard the Mir space station in Atlantis. The crew's day is winding down as they approach their evening meal time. They're almost getting to the end of their active duty day and we'll move into that time frame that is the evening time frame where they have a couple of hours to get ready to begin their eight-hour sleep period. We're currently receiving live television from Atlantis as it's docked to the Mir station. The two spacecraft are creating the largest spacecraft ever in Earth orbit at a mass of almost half a million pounds. At present, the two are above the Pacific Ocean, well off the coast of South America, at an altitude of 216 nautical miles. This is Mission Control Houston. This view is from the Space Lab module mounted in the cargo bay of Atlantis. Activity in the Space Lab module today has been to... Hi, Bonnie. We got you. Hello. In the module, Mission Specialist Bonnie Dunbar and Ellen Baker are at work activating it as they have been for the past hour and a half or so, preparing it for the various medical and scientific investigations. We're finishing up the activation with the specs up on the flight deck and shortly after that there will be total activation. Okay, thanks. This is Mission Control Houston as Atlantis and the Mir space station fly 215 nautical miles above the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Newfoundland. These views are from cameras mounted in the cargo bay of Atlantis, various views of the Mir station from several different cameras have been displayed over the past couple of minutes. On board the cruise day is winding down. They're reaching the point for the evening on board where they'll be preparing to go to sleep. Sleep time begins at 5.32 p.m. central. This view shows the docking interface between Atlantis and the Mir station. The two modules together and the docking mechanism in the lower center of the view.