Docking With Mir Last year something amazing took place, but it wasn't in a laboratory. It wasn't under the ocean, and it wasn't on the land. It was in space. The docking of the United States's Space Shuttle Atlantis and the Russian Space Station Mir was an important step towards international cooperation in space. This is not the first time the U.S. has been in contact with Russia in space matters. In 1965, an American Apollo capsule and a Russian Soyuz module were locked in orbital tango 245 miles above the earth, both crews tense with the feeling of peace and rivalry at the same time. In the past few years, American astronauts have used the Russian training fac