Dragonfly: NASA And The Crisis Aboard Mir

On February 12, 1997, two Russian cosmonauts joined an American astronaut on board the only permanent manned outpost in space, the dilapidated, eleven-year-old Mir space station. It was to be a routine mission, the fourth of seven trips to Mir that NASA astronauts would take as "dress rehearsals" for the two countries' partnership in a new International Space Station they were building back on Earth. But there had been bad omens: a Moscow psychic who predicted a mysterious disaster; a Russian doctor who warned that the crew was psychologically incompatible. Within two weeks the omens were borne out, as the three men were suddenly forced to fight the worst fire in space history. This was only the beginning of what would become the most dangerous mission in the thirty-six-year history of manned space travelan epic, six-month misadventure that would climax in the most harrowing accident man has faced in space since Apollo 13.