Mir Crew Seen as Too Tired to Make Repairs

MOSCOW — As the crewmen of the Mir space station recovered Friday from their latest brush with disaster--a power cut a day earlier that left them drifting in darkness--space officials in Russia suggested that the exhausted trio is in no state to make risky repairs to the crippled craft.

“It looks very much as though the current crew will be allowed to come back to Earth without being exposed to this extremely difficult and challenging job,” said Russian Space Agency spokesman Valery Lyndin.

Top space officials will make a formal decision Monday on whether to postpone the two-stage repairs to Mir’s damaged Spektr laboratory module until after a new crew reaches the space station Aug. 7.

Spektr was punctured last month when an unmanned supply craft hit it during a practice docking. The accident cut the cables from solar panels atop Spektr, leaving Mir with only about half its power and forcing the two Russian cosmonauts and their American crew mate, Michael Foale, to lead a stressful twilight existence until the cables are mended.

NASA officials said Friday that the U.S. space agency thinks the current crew could still do the job but that it would support either option under consideration: going ahead with the repairs or delaying them. “The final decision will not be made before Monday,” said Frank Culbertson, director of Mir missions at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Houston.

But officials in Russia seemed to have tacitly accepted in advance that it would be safer to let a fresh crew, specifically trained to mend the damage, do the job.

“The relief crew has been thoroughly trained. . . . They have rehearsed the repairs many times in the hydro pool here and seem to be trained much better,” Lyndin said.

The two Russians in the relief crew--Anatoly Solovev and Pavel Vinogradov--have learned at Russia’s Star City space training center how to rewire the solar panels and patch the hole in Spektr’s side.

In a sign that the current team is not likely to be sent on any repair mission, Foale and his colleagues were told to rest Friday and over the weekend.

A decision to cancel any repairs by the current crew would mean that a French astronaut, Leopold Eyharts, will probably also drop his plans to fly to Mir when the relief crew blasts off on Aug. 5.

Gerard Brachet, director general of the French Space Agency, said Friday that the Frenchman would not go to Mir unless the electricity had been repaired and conditions were right for Eyharts to carry out the scientific experiments he had planned. He said that, if the Russian relief crew is forced to do the repairs, the French astronaut’s flight would be postponed until January or February.

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The current crew members were expected to spend 20 days in space with their replacements. The two cosmonauts are due to return to Earth on Aug. 26, and Foale is scheduled to return in September aboard a U.S. space shuttle.

But Russian officials said a shorter hand-over period might also be decided upon at the meeting Monday at Mission Control Center outside Moscow.

The current crew has endured a series of hair-raising crises aboard the 11-year-old Mir since the June 25 puncturing of Spektr. Mir commander Vasily Tsibliyev, who was to lead the complex first stage of repairs--rewiring the disconnected solar panels back to the station--developed a stress-related irregular heartbeat this week.

Disaster struck again Thursday, when a weary crewman pulled out a cable and crashed the on-board computer, cutting power to oxygen generators, climate controls and communications, and sending a darkened Mir into a crazy tumble through space.

By Friday, the crew had managed to right the station and turn its solar panels back toward the sun, giving it light and power. But Lyndin said Mir was still using a backup navigational system of fuel-expensive boosters to stay facing the sun; the main gyroscopic system, which does not use Mir’s precious fuel stocks, will not work again until today.

Despite media reports Thursday that Mir is running short of fuel, Lyndin said there is twice the amount needed to propel the attached Soyuz escape capsule back to Earth if the crew members are forced to abandon the station.

After Tsibliyev’s heart problem was diagnosed, he was deemed unfit to do the repairs himself. NASA hesitantly gave permission for Foale to take his place. But if Foale were to carry out any repairs, he would need intensive training now to catch up with the repair lessons the Russians were taking last week.

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Mir Problems

It’s been a rocky ride aboard the Mir space station for Russian cosmonauts Vasily Tsibliyev and Alexander Lazutkin and American astronaut Michael Foale.

WHO THEY ARE

* Vasily Tsibliyev, 43: A native of the Crimea region, he is on his second space-flight. He has trained as a cosmonaut since 1987.

* Alexander Lazutkin, 40: This is the first spaceflight for Lazutkin, who has trained as a cosmonaut since 1992. He is Mir’s flight engineer.

* Michael Foale, 40: A British-born astro-physicist, Foale joined NASA in 1983 as a payload officer and was chosen as an astronaut in 1987.

WHAT THEY’VE FACED

* An oxygen canister bursts into flames, filling the station with vapor and smoke.

* Both oxygen generators fail, forcing the crew to rely on canisters similar to one that exploded in February.

* The temperature control system begins leaking coolant, briefly raising temperatures in parts of the station to above 86 degrees. The leaks are fixed.

* A Russian supply ship crashes into the station during a test. About half the station’s power is lost.

* Mir’s commander, Tsibliyev, complains of heart irregularities. He is declared unfit for the repair mission to restore lost power.

* Mir loses nearly all its remaining power when the crew accidentally disconnects a cable that delivers electricity to the mechanism that points the ship’s solar panels toward the sun.

February

* Cosmonauts Vasily Tsibliyev and Alexander Lazutkin board Mir.

* Fire breaks out.

March

* Oxygen generator fails.

April

* Cooling system leaks.

May

* Astronaut Michael Foale arrives on Mir.

June

* Collision.

July

* Cosmonaut’s health problems.

* Electrical blackout.