Word: mir
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MOSCOW: The Russian Space Agency may want to consider buying extra collision insurance for the long-suffering Mir. The station was nearly creamed Tuesday by a 350-pound U.S. satellite traveling along a similar orbit...
...close encounter wasn't quite as bad as June's supply-ship bust-up, but it did send Mir's three-man crew scurrying into their escape capsule, where they remained until the satellite shot overhead at a hasty 17,500 miles per hour. Russian space officials said the satellite came within 500 yards of plowing into the cosmonaut's front room...
...wasn't the fault of the commander with an aching heart, after all. In an exclusive interview with TIME, cosmonaut ALEXANDER LAZUTKIN revealed that it was he--not Russian commander VASILY TSIBLIYEV or NASA astronaut MICHAEL FOALE--who accidentally disconnected the fateful cable on board Mir in mid-July, sending the Russian space station into its second dance with death of the summer. "It was my fault," Lazutkin said softly, sipping coffee in his cramped two-room apartment on Moscow's northeast edge. "It was at night, and I was in the process of undoing something like...
Engineer Lazutkin and Tsibliyev, who returned to Earth last month, face fierce recriminations and quite possibly a stiff fine. Last week VALERY RYUMIN, the Russian head of the Mir shuttle program and the deputy head of Energiya, the firm that built Mir, blamed the cosmonauts for Mir's troubled summer. But within days other top Russian space officials came to their defense. Lazutkin says he's willing to abide by the conclusions of a joint U.S.-Russian investigation that will deliver its judgment later this month, but he remains convinced that Russia's earthly shortfalls contributed to Mir's difficulties...
...While things were becoming bizarre on Earth, a more familiar sight greeted us far above the planet: that of Mir's computer system crashing, for the third time. How did the crew react? By shrugging their shoulders and heading off to bed, of course. Ah, it's good to know some things never change...