Mir Expedition 23 footage: the zero-G space egg

This archival footage comes from the Mir space station in 1997, during Mir Expedition 23. Commander Vasily Tsibliyev and flight engineer Aleksandr Lazutkin flew to Mir on Soyuz TM-25 in February 1997. They came home in August. First, a cosmonaut moves a cargo box through the cabin in weightlessness. Then he plays with a small white egg-shaped object that floats in front of his face. Finally, he catches it in his mouth. Between the station shots, the film cuts to ground scenes where people react in a dimly lit room. The clip ends with a view of the Earth through a porthole. You can watch the preview in the original archive quality on our YouTube channel: Mir Expedition 23 (1997) and the zero-G space egg. For a shot list or a quote, write to footage@tvdata.tv.

Mir Expedition 23: video chapters

0:00 A cosmonaut moves a cargo box through the Mir cabin
0:30 Ground scenes intercut with the floating white object
0:54 Close-up of the space egg floating and caught
1:15 Porthole view of the Earth and closing scenes

Mir Expedition 23 in 1997: what happened

Soyuz TM-25 lifted off from Baikonur on 10 February 1997 and docked with Mir two days later. On board were commander Vasily Tsibliyev, flight engineer Aleksandr Lazutkin and the German astronaut Reinhold Ewald. Ewald flew the Mir’97 mission and came home on 2 March. Meanwhile, NASA astronaut Jerry Linenger lived on the station until May, when Michael Foale took his place.

On 24 February, with six people aboard, an oxygen-generating candle in the Kvant-1 module caught fire. The crew put on masks and fought the flame with extinguishers until it went out. Then, on 25 June, the Progress M-34 cargo ship hit the Spektr module during a manual docking test. The impact holed Spektr, so the crew sealed it off. As a result, the station lost power and spun slowly for more than a day before the crew and mission control brought it back under control.

The next crew, Mir-24, arrived on 7 August. A week later, on 14 August 1997, Tsibliyev and Lazutkin landed in Kazakhstan after almost 185 days in space. The space egg clip on this page comes from our reel labelled Mir Expedition 23, and our pages on the fire aboard Mir and the Soyuz TM-25 launch show more of the same mission.

Mir Expedition 23 footage: clip details

MIR SPACE STATION, LOW EARTH ORBIT – 1997: A cosmonaut moves a cargo box through the cabin, then plays with a small white egg-shaped object that floats in front of his face. Ground scenes of people reacting are cut between the station shots, and the clip ends with a view of the Earth through a porthole.

Archive quality and 4K upscale

The YouTube upload is standard definition, in the original archive quality. However, it has steady close shots of the cosmonaut and the floating object, so this footage upscales well. For licensing we supply the clip in HD, or as an AI-upscaled 4K version on request. We state the upscale on every licence. Before you order, we can also send you a short 4K sample of 10 seconds. You can see more examples on our page 4K archival footage.

Price on request

The price depends on how you will use the footage: the media, the territory, the licence term and the shots you choose. Send us the timecodes you need and we will reply with a quote. Our footage research is free.

More footage from Mir in 1997 is on our pages Soyuz TM-25 crew walk-out and launch, fire aboard the Mir space station and Shuttle Atlantis docking with Mir, and on the page Mir space mission footage.