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| S P E C I A L | Repairing Mir |
Report: Conditions on Mir much worse than thought
Continued U.S. participation questioned
September 12, 1997
Web posted at: 2:52 p.m. EDT (1852 GMT)HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) -- Conditions aboard Russia's trouble-plagued Mir space station have been much worse than the American astronauts who lived there and U.S. space officials have disclosed, a report from NASA's Inspector General's Office shows.
The hardships include:
Air with increased levels of carbon dioxide, caused at times by faulty equipment, that made astronauts woozy and more prone to make mistakes, according to U.S. astronaut Shannon Lucid.
A lack of knowledge by the Americans about how to operate Soyuz escape capsules that might be needed to return home in an emergency.
Hard-to-use emergency equipment. A February fire forced Jerry Linenger and his Russian crewmates to get tools to remove clamps holding down fire extinguishers. The clamps were designed to keep the extinguishers in place during launch and had never been removed.
Heat and the smell of garbage after the fire. "The temperature was 96 degrees Fahrenheit (35 Celsius) for months, and we had to smell garbage for five weeks," said Linenger.
Weight loss. Norm Thagard came back from Mir 17 pounds (7.6 kg) lighter.
Loneliness. John Blaha said he missed his family, adding that there was little opportunity to speak to anybody on Earth who spoke English.
A L S O :
NASA Letter to Congress Concerning Shuttle-Mir Program
National Aeronautics and Space Administration Inspector General Roberta Gross described some of the problems in a letter to the chairman of the House Science Committee, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr.
Her remarks come just two weeks before NASA's next shuttle flight to Mir, when a sixth American will be left on the station.
But an official with Russian Mission Control dismissed the criticism.
"Everything is OK at the station," the official told CNN, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Take the last failure even. Even the last failure was petty. There's not a bit more risk now than there was before.
"Sure, you can say it's dangerous to cross the street, especially in Russia right now, and so it is with space."
What next?
The current U.S. astronaut aboard Mir, Mike Foale, has put on a happy face despite the setbacks, but CNN has been told a lack of oxygen and a surplus of carbon dioxide may have contributed to a series of onboard mistakes which threatened the health of the station and could have killed the crew.
Thagard announced plans to leave NASA shortly after he returned from Mir. Two of the other five U.S. astronauts who have lived aboard the Russian space station told CNN they are planning to leave the space agency within six months.
The report says NASA has four choices:
Continue ferrying supplies to Mir but stop having U.S. astronauts live on the station.
Resume U.S. occupancy if safety conditions improve.
End all involvement and proceed directly to the international space station, to be assembled in orbit with Russian help beginning next summer.
No change, which is NASA's current plan.
NASA said it won't comment on the report until it is officially released next week.
A spokesman for Russia's Mission Control, Valery Lyndin, expressed surprise Thursday when informed of the critical tone of Gross's report.
He said cooperation between the two space programs is fine and that "things have been getting better" since two cosmonauts salvaged power aboard the battered station three weeks ago.
Correspondent John Holliman 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:
- Yelstin sets deadline for finding Mir culprits - September 11, 1997
- Mir 'normal' despite new computer failure - September 8, 1997
- Spacewalk fails to locate source of Mir oxygen leak - September 6, 1997
- Mir's main computer fails, station begins to tumble - August 18, 1997
Related sites:
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- NASA Office of Inspector General
- NASA Shuttle-Mir Web- official NASA site for U.S. astronauts and their activities aboard the Russian Mir Space Station
- ISS Phase I - Space Station Mir - contains graphics and specifications of the diferent areas of MIR
- Russian Space Agency - homepage of the Russian Space Agency through the NASA site
- Russian Space Science Internet
- Russian Space Research Institute (IKI)
- MIR Space Station - news, research, history, images and links from Maximov Online
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