STS 71

STS 71 is a fossilized skull of the species Australopithecus africanus. It was discovered in Sterkfontein, South Africa by Robert Broom in 1947. In 1972 John Wallace connected STS 71 with STS 36, a lower jaw found in the same layer, by matching the wear patterns on the teeth.

It is estimated to be 2.5 million years old.

Its characteristics include a smaller cranium and facial features than other female Australopithecines finds yet the size of the teeth indicate this specimen to be male. The face shows forward projection and the position of the temporal lines high on the cranium indicate large chewing muscles. The brain is 428cc.

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STS-71

STS-71 was the third mission of the US/Russian Shuttle-Mir Program and the first Space Shuttle docking to Russian space station Mir. It started on 27 June 1995 with the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis from launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The shuttle delivered a relief crew of two cosmonauts Anatoly Solovyev and Nikolai Budarin to the station and recovered Increment astronaut Norman Thagard. Atlantis returned to Earth on 7 July with a crew of eight. It was the first of seven straight missions to Mir flown by Atlantis.

For the five days the shuttle was docked to Mir they were the largest spacecraft in orbit at the time. STS-71 marked the first docking of a space shuttle to a space station, the first time a shuttle crew switched members with the crew of a station, and the 100th manned space launch by the United States. The mission carried Spacelab and included a logistical resupply of Mir. Together the shuttle and station crews conducted various on-orbit joint US/Russian life science investigations with Spacelab along with the Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment-II (SAREX-II) experiment.