MIRNEWS.119    25 JANUARY 1992

PROGRESS-M10 AND LANDINGCAPSULE:

Undocking of Pr-M10 took place on 20 Jan. 1992 (instead of the planned 18 Jan.
1992), Pr-M10 decayed in the atmosphere, the returncontainer landed safely at
1206UTC that day. As it landed in the planned landing zone it could easily be
recovered.
The cosmonauts later on transmitted TV-recordings of their work on the
dockingport just before the departure of the Pr-M10 and the inspection
afterwards. They did not see much of the departing Pr-M10.

PROGRESS-M11:

Due to attitude control problems the launch of this freighter had been put back
from 21 to 25 Jan. 1992. Launch from Baykonur at appr. 0750UTC for a 2-days
flight to the MIR complex. As soon as Pr-M11 came in range signals of the 2
transmitters (in the 166/165 mc band and on 922.755mc) could be monitored.
The freighter will deliver food, water, fuel, post, spare parts, all what is
necessary for the flight of the German cosmonaut in March 1992 and some protein
crystallisation experiments from Japan and the University of Nijmegen (the
Netherlands).
If all will go as planned Pr-M11 will dock to MIR's forward port on 27 Jan. 1992
at appr. 0930UTC. Cosmonaut's comments can be expected during the pass over here
during orb. 34014, 0918-0925UTC. Until the approach of Progress-M7 in spring
1991 all dockings of such freighters went smoothly. They always docked to MIR's
aft (Kvant-1) docking port. Due to problems with the Kurs-antenna on Kvant-1
Pr-M7 had to dock to the forward port. Therefor the cosmonauts had to redock
their Soyuz-TM ship to the aft port.
Artsebarskiy and Krikalyov repaired the antenna during an EVA on 25 July 1991,
but thusfar TsUP did not use that system for automatic dockings.

MIRCREW:

They keep good heart, but obviously they are concerned about the bad
economic- and political situation in their country. On Jan. 25th Krikalyov heard
a lot of news about the American spaceshuttle and President Bush, who spoke with
the shuttle crew. Bush was proud for this was the first launch in the Year of
Space, 1992, but he did not mention the fact that from the very beginning of
that year Krikalyov and Volkov already worked in space. Radio Moscow also gave
that news and did not speak about the CIS cosmonauts either, even the message
about the launch of Progress-M11 came very late and without any details.
President Bush told the shuttle crew that he will ask extra funds for Freedom
and other projects. The MIR-crew listened to this all and -Krikalyov made this
clear- thought: when will somebody speak to us in that way.

Chris v.d. Berg, NL-9165/A-UK3202.