Mir spacewalk hits snag

October 20, 1997
Web posted at: 1:37 p.m. EDT (1737 GMT)

(CNN) -- Two Russian cosmonauts hit a snag during a rewiring job on the Mir space station's solar energy system Monday, making it unclear whether they could successfully complete the operation, space officials said.

A few hours after beginning the mission, the two cosmonauts reported they had completed their tasks. Later, however, they reported running into trouble after connecting two cables to the airtight seal on the Spektr module. Spektr was punctured and sealed off after a space crash in June.

Commander Anatoly Solovyov and engineer Pavel Vinogradov said they were unable to connect a third cable, causing the mission to stretch beyond its scheduled 5 and 1/2 hour length.

Still dressed in their spacesuits, they were in a hatch area between Spektr and the rest of the Mir space station as they discussed with Mission Control what to do next.

Before a routine 50-minute gap in radio contact began, Mission Control gave them the choice of switching to reserve oxygen supplies to continue working or pulling out of the airless unit.

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A L S O :

Spacewalk aims to refocus solar panels

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Solovyov and Vinogradov connected Spektr's three undamaged solar panels to cables which 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.

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 you sent up is too short," he told ground staff.

Reserve oxygen supplies can give the crew, whose third man, NASA researcher David Wolf, is sitting in the Soyuz escape capsule, up to eight-and-a-half hours in their spacesuits. They began using up oxygen shortly before entering Spektr.

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.

If successful, the Kristall's computer will keep the Spektr's working solar panels in the alignment with the sun, thereby restoring nearly full power to Mir.

But the first order of business was clearing out the floating junk so the cosmonauts could move around easily inside the narrow module.

"Seven bags are flying around -- and a refrigerator door," Solovyov said.

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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