Word: mir
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...repairmen ever had so much riding on a service call as the two cosmonauts dispatched last week to fix Russia's crippled Mir space station. Commander Anatoli Solovyev, 49, and engineer Pavel Vinogradov, 43, must not only restore the station as a working orbital laboratory but also reassure their U.S. partners that Mir is safe enough to let Americans continue visiting...
That won't be easy. Even as they approached Mir, the automatic docking system failed, forcing the cosmonauts to complete the linkup manually. Worse, the Russian Space Agency concluded that it won't be possible to fix Mir's broken oxygen generator until a key replacement part is brought up by the U.S. space shuttle next month, forcing the crew--temporarily up to five men last week--to continue burning oxygen-generating chemical "candles...
Still, the new cosmonauts were nothing if not confident. Their first tasks are to boost the station's electric power and reopen Mir's damaged Spektr module, site of U.S. astronaut Michael Foale's experiments. Ever since an errant Progress supply capsule slammed into it in June, Spektr has been completely sealed off and the cables to its solar panels severed, cutting Mir's electric power in half...
Solovyev, a veteran of four missions to Mir, and Vinogradov, a space rookie, are slated to begin undoing the damage next week with a tricky "internal" space walk. Though they've rehearsed the zero-G procedure in water tanks, they could face unexpected problems when they open Spektr's hatch--from, say, sharp-edged shards of metal and glass floating in the module since the rapid depressurization...
After they install a new hatch that was flown to Mir last month, Solovyev will squeeze into Spektr to look for the cables from its solar panels so they can be reconnected to the Mir power system. But it will be a hunt in the dark, with the only light coming from a miner's type lamp on Solovyev's helmet and a flashlight held by Vinogradov in the airlock behind...