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| S P E C I A L | Repairing Mir |
Mir spacewalk ends as partial success
Power cable connections not fully completed
(CNN) -- Two Russian cosmonauts on Mir ended a longer-than-expected internal spacewalk on Monday but left some work unfinished after a snag prevented a complete rewiring of the space station's solar energy system. The problem may have been due to faulty equipment sent from Earth.
The repair session ended in a race against time, with the cosmonauts using up nearly all their oxygen.
Mir commander Anatoly Solovyov told ground controllers the hatch to Mir's airless Spektr module was closed after he and engineer Pavel Vinogradov had spent six hours 38 minutes inside it wearing spacesuits.
They had succeeded in connecting electric cables to only two of three solar panels on the module, which was punctured and sealed off after a space crash in June.
A L S O :
Spacewalk aims to refocus solar panels
Solovyov and Vinogradov said they were unable to connect a third cable, causing the mission to stretch beyond its scheduled 5 and 1/2 hour length as their oxygen supply ran low.
"Don't feel distressed," the Mission Control chief told the crew.
Solovyov and Vinogradov connected Spektr's three undamaged solar panels to cables that are intended to link them to a computer guidance system in another module. But the final element of the task, connecting the cables to three sockets in the airtight seal before closing up Spektr, had caused difficulties.
Wrench 'too short'
Solovyov told Mission Control near Moscow during an earlier radio exchange that they had taken 40 minutes to connect the first of the three. "It was hard because the spanner (wrench) you sent up is too short," he told ground staff.
As the two cosmonauts worked, the crew's third man, NASA researcher David Wolf, sat in the Soyuz escape capsule as a precautionary step in case a quick evacuation was necessary.
The idea behind the spacewalk was to reconfigure the cables so that Spektr's solar panels could be connected to a working computer on Mir's Kristall module, which was not affected by the June collision.
The plan was for the Kristall's computer to keep the Spektr's working solar panels in the alignment with the sun, thereby restoring nearly full power to Mir.
Before the cable reconnecting work began, the two cosmonauts cleared out floating junk inside Spektr to give them room to move around easily inside the narrow module.
"Seven bags are flying around -- and a refrigerator door," Solovyov said.
The bags, which contained scientific equipment and personal belongings, were taped to the walls and a safe place was found for the door.
On their previous venture into the Spektr in August, Solovyov and Vinogradov had to remove paneling along the walls, and this left many items free to drift about.
Correspondent John Holliman and Reuters contributed to this report.
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