Mir Crew Steps Out for Experiment, Inspections

The crew of Russia’s Mir space station ventured outside Friday for a five-hour spacewalk to inspect a broken solar panel and test a cosmic version of superglue designed to seal cracks in the aging craft.

Cosmonauts Sergei Zaletin and Alexander Kaleri returned safely to the station Friday evening after checking the ailing station’s outer surface and applying the glue to a special test panel.

The 14-year-old station began slowly leaking air shortly before the previous crew returned to Earth in August, leaving Mir unmanned until the April 6 arrival of Zaletin and Kaleri. The cosmonauts fixed the air leak last month, Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said.

They are testing the new glue in case there are future leaks, Lyndin said. Sealing the small holes is considered a priority task for the crew in view of plans to extend Mir’s life.

“The glue can be used in the future to fix small cracks which may appear on any spacecraft, including the new international space station,” he said.

NASA has expressed frustration over Russia’s effort to prolong Mir’s life, saying it diverts scarce Russian resources from the international space station. The new station is behind schedule because of Russia’s failure to launch a key component--the Zvezda service module--now scheduled for launch in July.

The cosmonauts determined what caused one of the Mir’s solar panels to stop working in March: a burned-out power cord, apparently singed by a short circuit, mission control officials said.

They said the likely reason for the damaged cable was wear caused by years of exposure in orbit to intense solar radiation.

Mission control chief Vladimir Solovyov played down concerns about the panel and said it would be fixed on a future spacewalk.

“It’s just one out of Mir’s 10 solar panels, and we have enough power for both life-support systems and scientific experiments,” he said.

In addition, the crew filmed the parts of the station worst affected by aging and also removed an experimental panel attached to Mir during a previous spacewalk.

The Russian government had planned to dump Mir into the ocean around March because it lacked the funds to keep it aloft. But Russia extended the mission after the Netherlands-based MirCorp provided funds to develop business possibilities on Mir.

MirCorp officials said they committed between $10 million and $20 million to finance the mission and promised to raise more funds to keep the station in orbit at least through the end of the year. They extolled Friday’s mission as the first privately funded spacewalk.

Zaletin and Kaleri are expected to return to Earth in early June, again leaving the station unstaffed until fall, when another mission is planned, Solovyov said.