Risky 6-Hour Spacewalk Fails to Find Any Holes in Mir Lab

MOSCOW — U.S. astronaut Michael Foale and Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Solovev floated outside the Mir space station for six hours Saturday, poring over the exterior of its main research lab in a vain search for the puncture that has rendered it useless.

The two partners in the post-Cold War quest to inhabit the cosmos examined five of seven suspected damage locations on the hull of the Spektr research module but failed to find any holes before being ordered back inside with only minutes to spare on their oxygen.

“No obvious puncture was discovered, to our very great regret,” said Mission Control flight director Vladimir Solovev, who is unrelated to the cosmonaut.

The perilous spacewalk was the first venture outside the crippled space station since a June 25 accident that sent a 7-ton cargo drone crashing into the Spektr module, piercing its hull, siphoning out its oxygen and ruining the NASA experiments underway inside.

Spektr’s metal exterior is covered with a layer of insulation, which cosmonaut Solovev had to cut away with a special blade attached to his spacesuit glove in search of the leaking puncture underneath.

While Solovev and Foale bobbed outside the spacecraft, anchored to a boom extending from the Kvant-2 module they emerged from, the third Mir inhabitant, flight engineer Pavel Vinogradov, videotaped their work through a window from inside the Soyuz TM-26 escape capsule also docked at the station.

It was apparent from Vinogradov’s running commentary on the repair operation that Solovev’s search was hampered by fragments of insulation that floated up like snowflakes as he cut through the protective skin shrouding Spektr’s hull.

“The more he does that, the more the pieces are flying around and the less I can see,” Vinogradov, on his first spaceflight, could be heard saying over the radio transmission monitored from Mission Control.

Although Foale and Solovev were unable to pinpoint the source of Spektr’s depressurization, they did manage to manually reposition two of the four solar panel arrays attached to the research module so they can better collect energy for the station. One of the panels was irreparably damaged by the June 25 collision, and the other has been unresponsive to the computerized guidance system since the accident.

“The cosmonauts did their best today. They could not have done any more,” said Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin, noting that the solar panel adjustments will help Mir resurrect some of the scientific work scuttled after the accident.

The extra power is vital if the Mir crew is to succeed in recovering use of the Priroda research module that had to be idled after the accident that deprived the space station of nearly half its normal power. The space team is also charged with trying to repair a faulty oxygen-generating system and climate-control devices before the late September arrival of the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis with a seven-member crew.

Russian Space Agency officials made clear there will be no other spacewalks from Mir for at least a month; the crewmen are awaiting fresh supplies from a cargo capsule due to be launched on Oct. 4.

Foale and Solovev opened the hatch of the Kvant-2 module at 5:05 a.m. Moscow time and returned to the pressurized main compartment of the space station at 11:07 a.m., under orders from Mission Control to complete their stay in open space by 11:10.

The pressurized Orlon spacesuits worn by the Mir crewmen are equipped with life-support systems that can last up to eight hours, but safety procedures forbid more than about six hours of continuous stay in the vacuum of space to ensure reserves in the event trouble arises in repressurizing the transit chamber leading into the main body of the station.

Saturday’s spacewalk was carried out without incident, in contrast with an Aug. 22 venture into the airless Spektr module to reconnect power cables severed after the collision so that the capsule could be sealed off. Solovev and Vinogradov--the two spacewalkers on that internal repair mission--spent more than an hour of precious spacesuit time in the transit chamber because of a malfunctioning pressurization valve and a hole in Vinogradov’s glove.

The probe of Spektr was only the second spacewalk of Foale’s career, but Solovev extended his world-leading time in open space to 10 treks spanning more than 40 hours.