Mir Crew Flies Around Space Station to Assess Damage

MOSCOW —  U.S. astronaut Michael Foale and his two new Russian crew mates flew a damage-assessment tour around the crippled Mir craft Friday to see what is needed to restore the world’s only space station to working order.

The 40-minute flight around Mir in the Soyuz escape capsule was the first task tackled by the crew since taking over from two ill-fated cosmonauts who returned to Earth on Thursday.

As newly arrived Mir commander Anatoly Solovev piloted the space dinghy, Foale videotaped the exterior of Mir’s main body and the Spektr research module in hopes of helping space officials determine precisely where the hull was punctured during a June 25 collision with a supply craft.

Results of the inspection were not immediately clear; Russian officials were planning to study the videotape.

Mir has been idled by severe power rationing since the accident knocked out 40% of the station’s solar batteries, forcing a shutdown of oxygen generation, water production, lighting and research work.

Solovev and fellow cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov are expected to don spacesuits and enter the airless Spektr module Wednesday in a perilous repair operation intended to restore full power.

Until Mir recovers its normal power supply, none of the scientific experiments that are the main purpose of maintaining the 11-year-old space station can proceed. For the past seven weeks, Foale and his Russian colleagues have been surviving mostly on an air supply provided by oxygen canisters, or “candles,” and battling to keep the space station habitable despite numerous malfunctions.

Mir suffered at least 10 serious accidents and breakdowns over the past six months while veteran cosmonauts Vasily Tsibliyev and Alexander Lazutkin were on board, including a fire in February after an oxygen candle burst into flames. Tsibliyev, who had been experiencing an irregular heartbeat attributed to stress, and Lazutkin are currently undergoing medical tests and debriefings in Russia.

Solovev and Vinogradov arrived at Mir on Aug. 7 and spent a week preparing to take over the mission, which Foale had joined in May under a program that allows the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration to share the space station.

Although Mir has long outlived the five years it was intended to be in orbit, both U.S. and Russian space officials are trying to salvage the craft to maintain a training site ahead of the 1999 launch of the Alpha International Space Station.

NASA is paying Russia $470 million for joint use of Mir and has repeatedly expressed commitment to the project despite Mir’s myriad problems.

Friday’s fly-around had a double objective: U.S. and Russian officials wanted film of the exterior to help pinpoint the hull puncture for a possible repair mission in early September, and the Russians wanted the Soyuz capsule relocated to the other side of the space station so a cargo vessel can be docked in its place and loaded with waste.

The Progress supply capsule that arrived at Mir in early July has been shadowing the station in a nearby orbit since Solovev and Vinogradov docked last week.

After the brief inspection tour, Solovev manually docked the Soyuz capsule at the space station--the second time he has performed, without incident, the maneuver that Tsibliyev was practicing from within Mir when the disastrous June collision occurred.