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| S P E C I A L | Repairing Mir |
Spacewalk to repair damaged Mir set for Friday
August 19, 1997
Web posted at: 11:20 a.m. EDT (1520 GMT)MOSCOW (CNN) -- The new Mir crew will make an internal space walk to repair the damaged Spektr module on Friday, Russian space agency officials said.
The officials said Tuesday that the spacewalk was to start Friday at about 5:30 a.m. EDT, provided that NASA and the Russians agreed that Mir was back to normal.
Russian space officials told CNN that Mir's damaged main computer, which failed Monday, was now back in operation, allowing Mir's guidance system to keep the station in a stable position.
Officials said the technical collapse was due to an old computer part which had never been replaced. A senior Russian space official said cash shortages were to blame.
"We used to change Mir's computer parts after its technical life expectancy would run out, say after five years. But now, due to financing problems, we have to use them till they die," Viktor Blagov, deputy flight head, told Reuters from Mission Control.
After Monday's computer failure, the crew fired the Soyuz escape vehicle rockets to realign Mir to the sun, in order to stem a dramatic drop in electricity caused by Mir's solar panels pointing away from the sun.
Life support systems aboard Mir continued uninterrupted Tuesday but many of the aging station's other systems remained off-line to allow the batteries to recharge.
Ground control also said that even though the computer failure had been serious, the crew was in no danger, pointing out that a similar breakdown had occurred before.
Monday's failure meant that the internal spacewalk, which had been originally scheduled for Wednesday, had to be delayed.
During Friday's spacewalk, the crew will try to assess and repair damage caused when an unmanned cargo vessel collided with Mir in June.
Mir has run on partial power since its Spektr module was damaged in the collision in what was described as the worst accident in its 11-year history.
The cosmonauts will have to enter the module to re-connect electric cables leading from Spektr's solar arrays to the main ship.
Experts said the spacewalk could last up to five hours, and the two Russian cosmonauts were not sure what kind of situation they would find inside the module.
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 computer fix on track - August 19, 1997
- Crew rights tumbling Mir after main computer fails - August 18, 1997
- Cargo craft docks manually with Mir space station - August 18, 1997
- Mir-go-round mission completed - August 15, 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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