MIRNEWS.125 3 APRIL 1992 NORMAL ROUTINE AGAIN: Just returned from a space mission reporting trip to Russia and Kazakhstan I had to try to pick up eventual QSO-s between MIR's new crew and the STS-45 Atlantis. Meanwhile I had to accustom to the the new crew, both with forename Aleksandr. Their official callsigns Vityaz-1 and 2 are seldom used. Viktorenko and Kaleri are radio-amateurs with calls resp. U9MIR and U8MIR. They still have to detect the joy and utility of that hobby. UA3CR (Leonid Labutin) and RV3DR (Sergey Samburov), trained the Vityazy and they told me to be sure that Viktorenko as well as Kaleri gradually will get as enthousiastic as Manarov (U2MIR) and Krikalyov (U5MIR). Now they are interested in the possibilities of Packet radio, but they still did not do much phonework in 145.550 mc. On March 31 1992 during some orbits MIR and Atlantis were close enough to establish radiocontact (even during passes over here), but they failed to make QSO-s. The next day Kaleri stated that he had heard Atlantis giving CQ-calls. Viktorenko called Atlantis on 1 April at 1120UTC, unfortunately he gave only one call. Before his return to earth on 25 March 1992 Krikalyov told TsUP that he liked to return, but regretted the fact, that 1 day after his return MIR and Atlantis had some windows for QSO's, which he certainly would have beeen trying out if he would have been on board. RADIOTRAFFIC NEW CREW: After the landing of Volkov, Krikalyov and Flade the new crew resumed the old routine operations: to maintain MIR operational, to adjust the attitude of the station, repairing and replacing equipment. Thus confirming that what Russian space officials told me during my stay in the CIS: the state of MIR's base block is so that it has to be replaced within 2 years. In their opinion this operation cannot be executed without financial support from abroad. JAPANESE SATELLITE IN SHORT DISTANCE FROM MIR: On April 1st 1992 the cosmonauts got the advice to look out for a Japanese satellite passing them on 203 degrees at 154654UTC in the distance of 5.5 KM with a relative speed to MIR of 5 KM per second. PARTICULARS ABOUT FREIGHTERS (PROGRESSES-M) DERIVED FROM SOURCES ON THE SPOT: PROGRESS-M10: Undocked from MIR on 20 Jan. 1992 at 0714UTC and decayed in the atmosphere over the Pacific ocean. During the undocking the crew did the experiment 'mgnoveniye' (wink). Using a Hasselblad camera they made pictures of the disappearing Pr-M10 while it entered the higher ozonlayers of the atmosphere. The returncapsule of Pr-M10 separated from Pr-M10 just in time to make a safe landing 229 KM north of Karaganda. PROGRESS-M11: Undocked from the forward port of the MIR complex on 13 March 1992 and decayed. Pr-M11 did NOT carry a returncapsule (this in contradiction to many rumours in East and West) . PROGRESS-M12: During our stay in Baykonur we saw this freighter still under construction in the MIK (mounting and test hall) over there. The launch of this ship will take place on 20 April 1992. On our last day in Moscow a decision whether this ship would be equipped with a returncapsule or not had not been taken yet. Problem as for a lot of problems in Russian spaceflight these days: funding. REDOCKING OF SOYUZ-TM13: For the oncoming docking to MIR of the Soyuz-TM14 the Russians planned to use the aft docking port (Kvant-1). For about a year they did not use that port for automatic dockings after problems with the Kurs-antenna. To free this port for the docking of S-TM14 the crew redocked Soyuz-TM13 from that port to the forward one in the transition section (P.Kh.O.). This autonomous flight of appr. 20 minutes took place on 14 March 1992. Chris v.d. Berg, NL-9165/A-UK3202.