Unloading of Supply Craft Put Off to Let Mir Crew Rest

After 12 nerve-racking days of battling to keep the Mir space station aloft following a crippling accident, U.S. astronaut Michael Foale and his two Russian colleagues were so exhausted that unloading of a newly arrived supply craft was postponed for a day, Mission Control Center press chief Vsevolod Latyshev said Monday.

“The astronauts were very tense--I would even say stressed-out,” Latyshev said of the demanding hours before the arrival of the unmanned Progress capsule that docked safely late Sunday. “The crew was absolutely worn out and received an order [from ground control] to rest shortly after the linkup.”

Tensions also remained high at this nerve center of the Russian space program despite the flawless docking. And cautious accounts of conditions aboard Mir intensified concerns that the prospects for restoring to working order the world’s only manned space station may be dim.

“There is no necessity for us to rush with the fixing,” said Sergei Krikalev, deputy flight director and a former Mir cosmonaut who is mapping out the risky repair plan. “We prefer to prepare well and take our time.”

A repair excursion into the damaged and depressurized Spektr research module of the Mir station had been scheduled for Friday, but mission controllers have postponed the risky undertaking until at least July 17.

Asked if Spektr, which was punctured late last month when a supply craft crashed into it in a failed docking maneuver, could be restored to full function, Krikalev demurred, saying the prospects for successful repair are “rather hard to assess.”

Another Russian space official here conceded that most of the repair job will be put off at least until mid-August, when the next crew arrives under the command of veteran Mir cosmonaut Anatoly Solovev.

The current Russian crew, commander Vasily Tsibliyev and flight engineer Alexander Lazutkin, will attempt only to reconnect severed battery cables to recover full power aboard the energy-starved space station, the official explained.

To perform even that interim repair job, the astronauts will have to don pressurized spacesuits and enter the cramped Spektr module. The Mir crew has reported hearing thumping noises from within Spektr, and there is concern that they may be caused by hazardous objects from scientific experiments ruptured when air was sucked out of the module after the accident.

The cosmonauts also need to replace the hatch cover between Spektr and Mir’s main cabin with a specially designed portal door that will allow electrical cables to pass through from the damaged module to the space station’s power grid. The crew must first seal off a section of Mir leading to Spektr, depressurize it and then crawl through the 2-foot-wide hatch and work by touch in the darkened module.

Mir lost 40% of its power-generating capability when the crew cut the previous power cables that ran through Spektr so that its hatch could be closed and air pressure maintained in the rest of Mir.

Without full power, Foale will be unable to resume even those experiments that survived Spektr’s decompression.

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Among the more than 3,000 pounds of gear shuttled to Mir aboard the newly arrived supply capsule were old spacesuits that may be used by the two Russians during their spacewalk into the damaged Spektr.

“They are more closefitting [than modern spacesuits], especially the gloves, so the cosmonauts can manipulate better for the detailed work of connecting the cables,” said one Russian Space Agency official.