Work to restore the Russian Mir space station to full working order continued after the departure of the seventh Space Shuttle Atlantis mission, which delivered cargo and equipment, including a new computer.
The Atlantis landed at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on 6 October following a ten-day mission, returning astronaut Michael Foale after a 140-day shift on the Russian base and delivering new astronaut David Wolf, for a three-month stay, with 4t of supplies.
A new unmanned supply tanker, the Progress M36, was launched on 5 October and was due to dock with the Mir after its docking port had been vacated by the M35, which remained attached to the station after a fault on 6 October. The M36 caries a new back-up computer.
Cosmonauts Anatoli Solovyov and Pavel Vinogradev will make internal spacewalks on 17-18 October to prepare electrical cables and sockets in the damaged Spektr module, to support an external spacewalk on 20 October. This spacewalk will enable power from a new solar array to be placed on the Kvant 2 module to replace one of the four panels lost on the Spektr.
Later spacewalks are planned, to repair the leak on the Spektr which was located in high-resolution pictures taken from the Atlantis as it was flown around the station before departing. As suspected, the leak appears to be at the base of the strut holding the damaged solar panel.
During a spacewalk by Atlantis astronauts Scott Parazinsky and Russian Vladimir Titov ( marking a first by a Russian cosmonaut wearing a US suit), a 780mm cone-shaped cap was placed on the outside of the station, which will be used in a later repair attempts in which the cosmonauts will apply sealant to the damaged area.
The next Shuttle Mir Mission is scheduled for January 1998. Its launch, and the question of whether another astronaut will be deployed to replace Wolf, will depend on the continued reliability of the Mir. The SMM 7 mission was only given the go-ahead by NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin 12h before lift-off on 26 September.
Goldin went against the advice of many critics, including representatives of the US Congress, but he says: "We move forward not only because it is safe, but for the important scientific and human experience we can gain only from Mir-the only place where NASA can get hands-on, real-time, experience training for the International Space Station".
Source: Flight International
