As Patching Up Mir Goes On, U.S. Questions Its Safety

Cosmonauts partly repaired the Mir space station’s central computer Tuesday and used booster rockets to stop the aging complex’s daylong free fall caused by the computer’s breakdown.

But the latest in a long series of mishaps on Mir, whose current three-man crew includes NASA astronaut Michael Foale, has focused U.S. anxieties about sending more Americans to the troubled Russian craft. At present, astronaut David Wolf is scheduled to take over from Foale in late September.

“It’s become much too visible a program,” one U.S. space expert said, requesting anonymity. According to Michael Braukus of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, three separate U.S. inquiries into safety on board Mir are going on, and their findings will be considered at the final flight readiness review, in mid-September, for Wolf’s mission.

Emergency work on Mir’s computer has delayed a spacewalk planned for today to begin repairs on the Spektr research module that was punctured in a near-catastrophic collision with a Progress cargo ship June 25. But upbeat Russian officials said that with the computer running again, the spacewalk might go ahead Friday or Saturday if Mir’s automatic navigation can be restored by then.

Energy supplies on Mir have run especially low since Monday. Solar panels went out of alignment with the sun when the computer malfunction sent the station spinning through the void for the second time in five weeks. Employing booster rockets to keep Mir on its orbit uses up precious fuel.

The next stage in repairs will be to restart the computerized controls that point Mir’s solar panels toward the sun–without wasting fuel. Vladimir Zhadayev, duty officer at Mission Control outside Moscow, said this could be done as early as today.

Meanwhile, the three crewmen–Anatoly Solovev, Pavel Vinogradov and Foale–were still taking special measures to keep the 11-year-old space station going. “They have switched off unnecessary instruments to save power,” said Valery Lyndin, spokesman at Mission Control.

What caused Mir’s computer to crash Monday while the cosmonauts were docking a cargo vessel has yet to be established. But Deputy Flight Director Victor Blagov suggested in comments to reporters that Russia’s financial woes are forcing cosmonauts to go on using aged equipment after it has stopped being safe. “We are saving a lot of money on this scheme, but we really have to decide soon whether we need safety or money-saving,” he said.

The run of recent disasters has all but stopped scientific experiments on Mir. Foale’s equipment, computer and data have been trapped inside Spektr since the module was depressurized in the June accident and was sealed off from the rest of the complex.

John Logsdon, a space policy expert at George Washington University, believes continued U.S. cooperation on Mir depends on whether conditions improve enough so that future astronauts can go back to research.

“In my mind, it doesn’t make sense to commit to a U.S. crew member unless you can do work … and we’ll know that in the next two or three weeks,” Logsdon told reporters.

But, he added, safety has not reached a crisis point on Mir, despite its problems. “It’s not a good place to be right now; that’s different than being in imminent threat of death.”