Card of the Day - 2021-10-08

This is MIR, the International Space Station, which was designed to prove that all nations could co-exist in space together.  You can read more about it at NASA/mir.  The STS-76 was named because it was the seventy-sixth space shuttle to be launched - on 22 March 1996 - though this space shuttle was actually called Atlantis, and it was her sixteenth trip into space.

The main purpose of the trip was to transport modules which would eventually make up MIR. This was a low-Earth-orbital space station, made of separate parts, which was assembled whilst in orbit, starting in 1986. Building it took ten years, and it was opened in 1996 under the control of the Soviet Union, which then became the Russian Federation. They were in overall control, but other nations came in to take part in missions and experiments. 2001, with The Soviet Union/Russia being

However there was a secondary purpose, an astronaut exchange, Shannon Matilda Wells Lucid coming in (and so becoming the only American woman to have lived on Mir) - and Norman Thagard out (after he had been there for a record hundred and fifteen days, though that record was broken by Valeri Polyakov, for his stay of four hundred and thirty seven days) 

We thought these were cards given away at visitor centres in America, but it turns out they were sold, and that other sets were available.

The cards measure 90 x 60 m/m and the images were taken on the mission.