Fingers Crossed, Russians Give Go-Ahead for Risky Repair

With deep breaths and mumbled prayers, Russian Space Agency officials Wednesday declared all systems “go” for a perilous spacewalk Friday from the troubled Mir space station into its damaged Spektr research module.

Two days after an unexplained computer failure sent Mir into an orbiting tumble, the glitch has been fixed, solar batteries have been recharged, oxygen is being generated and the crewmen--two Russians and an American--have declared themselves ready for the dangerous repair job.

Mir commander Anatoly Solovev and flight engineer Pavel Vinogradov are expected to don bulky spacesuits and helmets to venture into the airless module that has been sealed off from the rest of the station since a June 25 accident.

But with an eye toward the mishaps and breakdowns that have plagued the aging Mir this year, mission specialists concede that they are making no assumptions about how the walk will go.

“We don’t expect any system failures during the spacewalk, but after all we have been through, no one can guess God’s ways anymore,” sighed Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin.

Mir has suffered at least 10 serious accidents in the past six months, including three incidents dire enough that they could have justified abandoning the 11-year-old complex--which was built to last five years. But because it is the world’s only existing training facility for the Alpha International Space Station set for launch in 1999, both Russian and U.S. space officials have been pressing for every last effort to salvage Mir.

Since a manual docking practice with a cargo drone went awry eight weeks ago and punched a hole in Spektr’s hull, Mir has been limping along on about half power at the best of times.

When the cargo capsule collided with Spektr and air began leaking into space, the crew that was then on board Mir had to seal off the damaged module and conserve pressurization elsewhere on the space station. More than a dozen power cables carrying solar energy from batteries outside Spektr through its portal into the main power grid had to be severed.

Friday’s repair mission is aimed at replacing those cables and reconnecting the isolated solar panels so Mir can recover full power and resume normal life-support systems as well as some of the scientific experimentation that is the space station’s main purpose.

Spektr was used as the ship’s primary laboratory and as U.S. astronaut Michael Foale’s quarters. Most of the equipment, experiments and data inside are thought to have been destroyed or damaged during the collision.

The planned five-hour spacewalk to restore the lost solar capacity is considered hazardous because the crew does not know what substances or sharp-edged objects might be floating inside the dark, cramped module.