
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, November 18, 1995                   TAG: 9511200100
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Houston Chronicle
DATELINE: HOUSTON                                LENGTH: Short

ATLANTIS, MIR BUTTON UP

Astronauts and cosmonauts aboard Atlantis and Mir closed the hatches separating their docked spacecraft Friday, as the U.S. shuttle prepared for departure.

Atlantis was to separate from the Russian outpost early today, moving 525 feet away and then slowly circling the 10-year-old space station twice for a photographic survey before heading to a separate orbit.

``It's a bittersweet moment as we leave three friends up here to stay,'' astronaut Jerry Ross said after the hatches closed at midday.

``We've come to the end of the most successful mission I could imagine,'' Atlantis commander Ken Cameron told Yuri Gidzenko, Mir's commander.

The eight men aboard the two ships marked the end of the shuttle's three-day visit with a vigorous exchange of handshakes and ``high fives'' and a ragged chorus of ``Those Were The Days.''

Cameron, Ross, Jim Halsell, Bill MacArthur and Canadian Chris Hadfield are scheduled to end their eight-day flight Monday.

Gidzenko, Sergei Avdeyev and European Space Agency astronaut Tom Reiter of Germany plan to end a 180-day stay aboard Mir in late February.

The final hours of docked operations included plenty of work, much of it associated with the transfer of more than a ton of food, water, clothing and scientific gear between the two spacecraft.

by CNB