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| S P E C I A L | Repairing Mir |
Crew rights Mir after main computer fails
August 18, 1997
Web posted at: 3:34 p.m. EDT (1934 GMT)MOSCOW (CNN) -- The Mir crew worked Monday to repair the Russian space station's main computer after it shut down earlier in the day, sending the station drifting out of control for a time.
Mir's solar panels lost their alignment with the sun during the mishap, causing a dramatic drop in battery power and forcing engineers to shut off all but vital life-support systems.
The Mir crew managed to stabilize the station and reorient the solar panels by firing the steering rockets on the Soyuz escape vehicle.
Russian Mission Control sent instructions to the Mir crew, telling them how to repair the central computer. According to the Russian news agency Itar-Tass, the crew is to change one panel in the computer by Tuesday morning.
Officials described the incident aboard Mir as "serious" but said the three-member Russian-American crew was not in danger.
The main computer failure came shortly after the computerized automatic pilot system failed on the Progress supply ship.
Damage to Mir from the unmanned capsule that crashed into it.
192 K/24 sec. Slide show
The failure occurred 13 minutes before the unmanned craft was to dock with the space station, and Mir's commander, Anatoly Solovyov, decided to perform the docking manually.
It was during a manual docking June 25 that the Mir suffered its worst accident in history, when a Progress supply ship crashed into the Spektr module.
The Progress redocking took place at 8:53 a.m. EDT. Space officials had hoped to dock the unmanned cargo ship Sunday using the automatic docking system, but postponed the maneuver for one day because of a computer problem.
An internal spacewalk to perform crucial repairs on the damaged Spektr module, planned for Wednesday, will be delayed until this weekend at the earliest, Russian space officials said.
Moscow Bureau Chief Jill Dougherty contributed to this report.
· MIR MAIN PAGE · RELATED SITES · HISTORY ·
· TIMELINE · GALLERY · SOYUZ · CREW · REPAIR MISSION ·
- CNN In-Depth: Space
- Video Almanac: 1996 - Mir and Atlantis dock
- Video Almanac: 1986 - Soviets launch Mir
- Message Board: Repairing Mir
Related stories:
- Mir's main computer fails, station begins to tumble - August 18, 1997
- Cargo craft docks manually with Mir space station - August 18, 1997
- Mir-go-round mission completed - August 15, 1997
- Mir cosmonauts prepare to return home - August 13, 1997
Related sites:
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- American Society for Gravitational and Space Biology
- Russian Space Science Internet
- Russian Space Research Insstitute (IKI)
- NASA Shuttle-Mir Web
- Keith's MIR Page
- ISS Phase I - Space Station Mir
- Russian Space Agency
- MIR Space Station - Maximov Online
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