Mir Crew Prepares for Risky Repair Job

U.S. and Russian crew members aboard the damaged space station Mir checked their spacesuits and equipment Wednesday in preparation for a risky “spacewalk” repair job inside a sealed-off part of the orbiting craft, Russian space officials said.

“Today the crew were busy trying their spacesuits on and preparing for the spacewalk in them,” said Vladimir I. Zhadayev, the Russian Flight Control Center’s duty officer.

Mir was damaged last week when an unmanned cargo craft struck the side of Spektr, one of half a dozen modules attached to the station’s core, puncturing Spektr and letting oxygen gush out. Spektr, which contained U.S. astronaut Michael Foale’s scientific equipment and living quarters, was depressurized and sealed off.

Cables connecting Spektr’s state-of-the-art solar power batteries to the rest of Mir had to be cut to seal the module and stop the rest of the station from depressurizing.

Since then, the station has lost as much as 40% of its power and has been forced to shut down some operational systems. If the damage cannot be repaired and scientific experiments cannot be resumed, the world’s only orbiting station may have to be abandoned.

NASA officials reported over the weekend that the three Mir occupants were relying on a backup system of “oxygen candles” to boost their oxygen supply. But a Russian mission control spokeswoman told Reuters news agency that there were no problems with the oxygen supply.

“Everything is all right, and there are no problems with oxygen. The Elektron system which produces oxygen on board is working fine,” the spokeswoman said.

The repair operation, in which Foale’s Russian colleagues Vasily Tsibliyev and Alexander Lazutkin will don spacesuits to go back into Spektr and try to mend the hole in its side, as well as reconnect the idled solar batteries to Mir’s power grid, is tentatively scheduled for July 14. Foale will stand by in the Soyuz shuttle craft that is used to bring people to and from Mir, ready to evacuate the trio if the operation goes wrong.

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Zhadayev said the two Russian cosmonauts have put aside their bulky new spacesuits and are practicing using two older suits that are smaller and better suited to the cramped conditions inside Spektr.

Before they can start work, equipment has to be sent up from Earth, including the cables that will run from Spektr to the rest of the station. The launch of another cargo craft, delayed for several days so the emergency equipment could be loaded, is now scheduled for Saturday.

Nothing like this repair job has ever been attempted.

Tsibliyev is concerned that the trio lacks the know-how for the sensitive operation.

Meanwhile, on Earth, a team of understudies at Star City, Moscow’s space training center, has started rehearsing the repair operation on a model of Mir submerged in a pool of water 20 feet deep.

“The understudy team is trying to simulate every situation the cosmonauts might face when they get into Spektr,” said Vsevolod Latyshev, a spokesman at mission control near Moscow. Zhadayev said the underwater conditions simulate those of weightlessness in space.

The errant cargo craft--which crashed into Spektr while the two Russians were trying to pilot it by remote control into a docking port--reentered Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean and burned up as scheduled Tuesday night, Russian officials said.

On Tuesday, Russian Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin praised the three crew members for their quick reaction to last week’s crisis and their presence of mind since then. They “acted like a single team, regardless of whether they were Russian or American,” he said. “This is a good example for the future.”