In what year did the US shuttle dock with a Russian space station for the first time?
29 June - the first docking occured
The primary objectives of this flight were to rendezvous and perform the first docking between the Space Shuttle and the Russian Space Station Mir on 29 June. In the first U.S.-Russian (Soviet) docking in twenty years, Atlantis delivered a relief crew of two cosmonauts Anatoly Solovyev and Nikolai Budarin to Mir.
Other prime objectives were on-orbit joint United States of America-Russian life sciences investigations aboard SPACELAB/Mir, logistical resupply of the Mir and recovery of US astronaut Norman E. Thagard.
Secondary objectives included filming with the IMAX camera and the Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment-II (SAREX-II) experiment.
STS-71 was the 100th U.S. human space launch conducted from Cape Canaveral, the first U.S. Space Shuttle-Russian Space Station docking and joint on-orbit operations; largest spacecraft ever in orbit; and the first on-orbit changeout of Shuttle crew.
Docking occurred at 9 am EDT, 29 June, 1995 using R-Bar or Earth radius vector approach, withAtlantis closing in on Mir from directly below.