And Andy will be the last American on Mir

Andrew Thomas, Mir’s next astronaut, was the main attraction.

“Good luck, Andy ” well-wishers shouted when he headed to the pad. Among those on hand for the launch was newly renamed astronaut John Glenn, preparing for his own shuttle flight this fall.

Thomas, a 46-year-old Australian-born engineer, will replace David Wolf aboard the space station. Endeavour is due at Mir tomorrow.

“We begin ’98 sending our last astronaut for his stay on Mir,” a launch controller said moments before liftoff. “We’re going to howl for the Wolfman.”

At the moment of Endeavour’s launch, Mir was soaring over the north Atlantic 7,200 km away on its 68,136th swing around the world. Wolf and his two Russian crewmates were said to be asleep.

The only snag during the final stage of the countdown was a computer crash that erased some data in launch control all the lost data had to be reloaded.

Although Wolf’s four-month stint was calm compared with his predecessors’ hair-raising adventures, he admits it was tough at times.

“He’s in for the experience of his life,” Wolf said of Thomas.

“It will be hard. There’s no question.”

To ease the high temperatures on Mir, endeavour will drop off a new air conditioner during the five days of linked flight. A spare computer also will be delivered along with food, water and other supplies.

Wolf said he has “no second thoughts” about Thomas spending the next four months aboard the aged space station, the scene of a near-catastrophic fire and collision last year.

“You have to always respect the environment in space,” Wolf said. It inherently has hazards, but there are no more here than in any other spacecraft and in some ways less. We have an escape vehicle. You have to be willing to use it.”

Thomas will be the seventh American to live on the Russian outpost. The first, Norman Thagard, spent nearly four months there in 1995. The visits are practice for the international space station, to be assembled in orbit beginning at the end of June, just after Thomas returns to earth.

“I would like to assure you that American astronauts on board of Mir station performed absolutely adequately,” said Gen Yuri Glazkov, deputy director of the Cosmonaut training center in Russia. “But I would like to tell you also that none of the American astronauts broke anything on board the mir station, as opposed to some of our fellows.”

While he never broke anything, Wolf admits to making at least one embarrassing mess.

Shortly after arriving at Mir in September, Wolf accidentally squirted black currant jelly all over a tv set, stereo, cassettes and air duct.“It cleaned up pretty well, but i have definitely left my mark on Mir,” he wrote in a letter home.

For now, the 41-year-old doctor is focusing on coming back to a good pizza, a cold drink and his girlfriend.