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| S P E C I A L | Repairing Mir |
Spacewalk aims to refocus solar panels
October 20, 1997
Web posted at: 10:39 a.m. EDT (1439 GMT)(CNN) -- Two Russian cosmonauts ventured into the Mir station's airless Spektr module Monday after a short delay, Mission Control said.
"Pasha (engineer Pavel Vinogradov) is entering the module," Mir commander Anatoly Solovyov told Mission Control by radio. They were initially due to enter Spektr at 12.55 p.m. (0855 GMT) for a lengthy solar power repair job but the operation was delayed by more than 40 minutes.
The spacewalkers will attempt to repair solar panels, returning the station to nearly full power for the first time in months.
The Spektr module was sealed off after an unmanned Progress supply ship crashed into it on June 25. Since then, Mir's most critical systems have been restored and three of Spektr's four solar panels have been reconnected.
But the working solar panels cannot be oriented to best catch sunlight, so they are operating well below capacity. This lack of available power is not life-threatening, but it does limit the crew's ability to conduct experiments.
CNN's John Holliman previews the spacewalk from inside a model of Spektr:
360K/28 sec. QuickTime movie
Cosmonauts Anatoly Solovyov and Pavel Vinogradov will conduct what is called an internal spacewalk as they will never leave the interior of the station. But Spektr's insides, badly damaged and sealed off from the rest of the station since the accident, are no more hospitable than outside.
In the scheduled five-hour spacewalk, the cosmonauts plan to open the hatch to Spektr and find the control cables for the working solar panels, cables that were hastily cut when Spektr's hatch had to be closed after the accident. Those cables will then be reattached to an orientation computer on the undamaged portion of Mir. The fourth panel is badly damaged and will probably be removed in a later spacewalk.
As in previous spacewalks, Mir's third crewman -- American astronaut Dave Wolf -- will wait in the Soyuz escape capsule. Wolf explained that if something went wrong during the spacewalk, one of Mir's modules could be used as an airlock, enabling Vinogradov and Solovyov to join him on the Soyuz.
"And then, we will all have to abort the mission and come home in the Soyuz if we cannot re-enter the station itself," Wolf said.
NASA and the Russian space agency both hope that Wolf's preparations will be for naught. To ensure success, the cosmonauts rehearsed the spacewalk on Earth, in a full-scale model of the entrance to Spektr located in Korolyov, Russia. They also donned their space suits Saturday for a dry run.
Should they accomplish the mission, Mir, which has been limping along on partial power since June, will be back at near-full power levels. More electricity translates into more science experiments for Wolf, and more possibilities for keeping the aging space station alive.
Correspondent John Holliman contributed to this report.
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Related stories:
- Mir's troubles overshadow plans for new station - October 13, 1997
- A day late, Mir casts off supply ship - October 7, 1997
- Supply ship fails to undock from Mir - October 6, 1997
- Leak in Mir may have been located - October 3, 1997
Related sites:
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- International Space Station - official NASA site providing an overview of the Space Station Program
- ISS Factbook - online version of the official International Space Station Fact Book
- 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 Research Institute (IKI)
- MIR Space Station - news, research, history, images and links from Maximov Online
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