Space Station Status Report: No Danger but No Fun

U.S. astronaut Michael Foale and two Russian cosmonauts spent another tense day in the darkened Mir space station trying vainly to boost their power supply Friday. But mission controllers said the crisis has stabilized, and the men are now in more discomfort than danger.

The space station’s toilet and air-cleaning system had been shut down since Wednesday, when an accident cut as much as 40% of the Mir’s energy supply and forced emergency power rationing.

Even Foale’s toothbrush became a casualty of the devastating crash of a supply module into what had been the American’s private quarters. The crew was already suffering other inconveniences; a shower on board the troubled space station was dismantled more than a year ago, for example.

The spacecraft can operate for weeks at its current energy level, said officials from both Russia’s Mission Control Center and NASA. But they acknowledged that conditions in the interim will be grim.

“It’s probably like being on a submarine with very bad engine trouble,” one American scientist based in Moscow said of the intensifying odors. “There is a way out. They’ve got the Soyuz capsule [docked at Mir], and at the first sign that life is at stake these guys are going to be out of there. But in the meantime, it’s got to be, to say the least, uncomfortable.”

Foale and cosmonauts Vasily Tsibliyev and Alexander Lazutkin face an eight- to 10-day wait for repair equipment to arrive aboard another Progress cargo craft, due to blast off on July 4 or 5 and dock with Mir two days later, said Yuri N. Koptev, head of the Russian Space Agency.

The Mir occupants worked with ground controllers Friday to reposition solar panels that survived the accident to maximize their collection of the sun’s energy. But Koptev acknowledged that the power supply remains too low for the crew to restart equipment for experiments or most lifestyle improvements.

The hardships were inflicted when a remote-controlled docking experiment went awry, knocking the entire Mir craft askew from its solar alignment, damaging four of its 10 solar collectors and punching a hole in the Spektr module that had housed Foale and much of NASA’s equipment.

Though the ground-directed solar realignment failed to appreciably improve the power supply, life for Mir’s inhabitants improved in one aspect, said Frank Culbertson, NASA’s director for the cooperative Mir missions.

Power was switched back on to Mir’s toilet, he said, sparing the three men the added indignity of having to use plastic bags instead.

Mir remains under a partial blackout. Efforts to recharge its batteries have failed, meaning critical navigation and life-support systems are still not operating normally.

The biggest setback occurred Thursday night, when batteries powering the system that points the craft at the sun were drained, Culbertson said.

As a result, Mir went into “free drift” for about two orbits of the Earth while the crew slept. When the crew became aware of the problem, rockets on the Soyuz capsule were used to reposition Mir.

Once the new supply ferry arrives, the plan calls for cosmonauts to don spacesuits and attempt to replace the hatch that seals off Spektr with one that will permit electrical cables to pass through to the now-isolated solar collectors.

Culbertson said the prospects for fixing the puncture in Spektr’s hull remain uncertain. While Spektr is not dead, it is in a “coma,” he said.

Meanwhile, scientific work has come to a standstill, and the idled occupants face bleak prospects for rest or recreation.

One NASA official here said he believed that scaled-back energy usage has probably forced Foale and his colleagues onto a cold-food regimen to save the energy needed to heat water for freeze-dried dishes.

Russian space officials decided more than a year ago to dispense with the space station’s shower, arguing then that use of moist towelettes was more efficient, said Igor Goncharov, the Russian space program’s medical director.

While space agency officials on both sides of the Atlantic emphasized that the astronauts can escape in the Soyuz craft docked at the space station at any sign of danger, some admit privately that financial and psychological pressures are pushing NASA to stay on board with the Mir mission.

If Mir’s current inhabitants leave the space station unmanned for the first time in its 11-year history, the 140-ton craft could drift out of orbit and fall back to Earth, becoming a dangerous meteor of burning space junk.

Some of the $473 million NASA contributes to the Russian space program to keep Mir operating as a classroom for space endurance would also be lost, further complicating timely delivery of Russia’s already overdue components for the Alpha international space station planned for launch in 1999.

“There would probably be some effect,” said the NASA official here, noting that much of the funding is contingent on “deliverables”--completion of specific research projects aboard Mir.

Williams reported from Moscow, Vartabedian from Washington.