 for today and we're looking forward to the EVA tomorrow. Executing your plan and we see we got a bunch of tips messages on board already and we'll get right into them. Thanks a lot for all the hard work your ship put in for us. Hey, that's a beautiful tribute to Bob Overmire and I want to let you all know that our crew sends their deepest sympathies to his family. Bob was, he lived life to the fullest. He was quite a wonderful man and those who met him surely never will forget him. And I remember most among many things that he was very instrumental in the work on Space Station and so I think we're charged to carry on with his work. Thanks very much for sending up the poem. Hey Dave, we've got a good fix on the Comet High in Kentucky right now and it is absolutely beautiful. We're trying to take some images of it with the F-4 night lens and hopefully they'll turn out that the tail is absolutely long and looks like it goes to the end of the universe. Incredible, we're on camera Delta. Maybe you could help us orient the camera. The mirror base block, it's between the solar rays of the mirror base block. Okay. I would say tilt 90 and pan about 30. We'll start there. 30 to the right. Good morning. Do you have an opening statement before we take questions? I'd like to make an opening statement and I'll ask Yura to make one also. We'd like to welcome everyone aboard the Atlantis Mirror Space Complex here and I want to begin by first recognizing the Mirror 21 crew, the three people right in front of me. It used to be two but now three and the rest of the SDS-76 crew here in the back row and we're one shorter than what we took off with and that's been a major accomplishment for us on this flight. We're being chanted up here to the Mirror Space Station for the first of many visits by U.S. astronauts to the Mirror Space Station and we are very proud to have participated in that. In addition we've been working really hard lately and are quite pleased with the results of the plan that Ron brought together as our payload commander for the transfer plan and we've had three very productive days transferring supplies to mirror to ensure that it can continue in its mission here in Earth orbit and on top of that I think the Biorack Linda has been going really really well also and so I would like to welcome you all aboard and I'll pass the microphone now to Commander Anya Frenko for his welcoming statement. This is Marsha Dunn of the Associated Press for Dr. Lucid. I'm wondering if you could describe your initial impressions as you floated into the Mirror the other day. What struck you most about the Space Station? Any surprises? We floated in. It felt pretty much like I was coming home because I'd been in the train there in Star City quite a few times and so I felt very comfortable coming in and then of course Yuri and Yuri were there and they welcomed us very very warmly and so it was sort of like coming back home to see your friends and Yuri and Yuri have gone out of their way to make all of us feel very welcome and very comfortable here in their home. Bill Hart with CBS for Commander Chilton I guess. Commander as you mentioned with Shannon Lucid's flight here at least through Phase One there'll be a permanent U.S. presence in space and if Phase One overlaps the first flight to International Space Station it's a permanent presence for the indefinite future. What's the significance of that in your view I mean historically is that a major milestone for the U.S. program how do you look at that? I think you know we want to establish a permanent presence in space and from a historical perspective you can look back on the discovery of America and the early colonization of it and so actually we're kind of beginning the colonization of space here. We've been to and from just as the early explorers were to and from North America from Europe and then finally they settled and then they started to do productive work over there and found a great nation. I kind of look at it in the same similar light where we've been coming to and from space and when we get here permanently then we can start seeing the fruits of our labor. And a quick question for Shannon Lucid. Dr. Lucid obviously in two days or so you're going to be left there on your own for several months with the two Uries. I'm just wondering is undocking approaches if now that the initial rush of excitement is over from getting there if that feeling of watching the shuttle depart how you might respond to that or is it just all business for you up there? I feel bad to see the 76 crew depart because I've really enjoyed working with them and being a part of that crew but I've also enjoyed being a part of the Mir 21 crew and frankly when the 76 crew depart then we'll be able to sort of settle down into a routine and start getting a little productive work done on the science and things like that. I will be non-productive. I just mean that we don't have like a routine yet. This is Irene Brown again with UPI for Shannon again. You've been with NASA a long time through many administrators and space shuttle program changes and space station designs. Did you ever imagine that the shuttle's first port in space would be a Russian craft or that you who has had a personal brush with war would be stationed on it? Beyond my wildest dreams I never envisioned that I'd be sitting here with Americans and Russians onboard the Russian space station. So this goes to show that you can never plan on everything that's going to happen in life. You guys look good. Good morning America. This is Houston. Please call Atlantis for a voice check. Alright Columbia, this is Charlie Gibson in New York on Good Morning America. Do you hear me? I sure do. Hello again Charlie. How are you today? I'm sorry. I said Columbia and I should say Atlantis. I'm off on my airships here but it's good to see all of you and you can hear me. Alright thanks. We will start in about 10 seconds on our end. Chilton let me start with you. Are you all up there disappointed that Apollo 13 didn't get best picture last night? Well believe it or not that's the first we've heard of it. But you're breaking the bad news to us. I'm sure we've all seen it. I know Commander O'Neil-Franco and Board Engineer Yusicev have seen that movie and they really liked it. And everybody else in the crew has seen it and really loved it. And I'm a big fan of Tom Hanks and Ron Howard. Well the Academy may not have gone for Apollo 13. They chose Braveheart as best picture but we can safely say that a pole of the Atlantis crew and of the Soviets came out with Apollo 13 as best picture, correct? I think that would be safe to say although you know we watched Braveheart in quarantine just before we launched and that was a good movie too. You have a kind of sleep schedule that only Joan and I can relate to I think. Colonel Chilton we tend to lose track of some of these missions in space but this one obviously very much a first and you should run it down for us. It's the first time that a woman has joined, an American woman has joined the MIR crew and Shannon Lucid was originally a member of the SGS-76 crew and we had the official hand over the other day. She's joined the MIR-21 crew with Cosmonaut O'Neil-Franco and Yusicev and so that's the first and it's also the beginning. It's the beginning of a continuous U.S. presence space. We're getting ready for another first tomorrow and that's when Linda and Rich as you see here in the front are going to make a historic space walk. It'll be the first time people have gone out the door from a U.S. shuttle while attached to a space station and in this case the MIR space station and it's going to be a special moment tomorrow and we're all looking forward to it. Alright so we're going to have a series of Americans up there at least through 1998 and what's going to happen during those two years plus? Several things. Number one, it'll give the Americans a chance to know what it's like to space and also to get more information on what happens when people spend very long time and so we'll learn about that. It will also help us to know what we need to know when we start operating space stations and more about cooperating with other nations which space stations will depend upon how we can cooperate with other nations for a very large degree and in addition to that, we'll be collectively collecting new data. Well there we are back on those time schedules again that gets so confusing for people but Rich what's the purpose of the space walk? The three main purposes. The first purpose is to install four experiments on the exterior of the docking module which is attached to the MIR core module and then we're also going to evaluate some special tools and equipment for building the space station and the third thing is we're going to bring back a camera which was installed on the docking module for SDS-74's docking mission. Commander Kevin Shilton aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis about 200 miles above the planet Earth joined here by the MIR 21 crew from the Russian MIR space station and this is Commander Oniflianco. It's wonderful in America. Terrific guys, terrific. That's wonderful. Thank you very much. Absolutely marvelous.