MIRNEWS.152 31 OCTOBER 1992 PROGRESS-M15: This freighter has been launched from Tyura-Tam on 27.10.92 at 1719 UTC. During her 2-days flight the Telemetry and beacon transmitters could be monitored in the 166, 165 and 922 mc bands. Pr-M15 automatically docked to MIR's aft (Kvant) docking port on 29.10.92 at 190538UTC, so 10 seconds before the ETA. Pr-M15 delivered to MIR the normal supplies: water, fuel, food, post, spare parts and post. During the 2 passes after the docking (resp. 38322, 2032UTC and 38323, 2211UTC) Solovyov reported that he had opened the hatches to the freighter and that everything was spick-and-span. Pr-M15 also carried an experiment, which has to be executed around the midst of December (probably on 10.12.92). It consists of a little sail, which, after being jettisoned out of the then disappearing Pr-M15, has to travel into space using solarwind. ALTAIR: Peter's monitoring of Altair's MIR-TsUP traffic revealed a lot of interesting events. On 7.10.92 the crew underwent medical tests among which the E.C.G.-s while training on the velo-ergometer. Thus the FAX-like sounds could be heard again. On 8.10.92 the crew tested the steering-systems of the ship Soyuz-TM15. Solovyev reported all what he was doing on board S-TM15. For him it seemed to be somewhat like training in a linktrainer. He even referred to the the period in which he flew as a pilot-observer. MIR's orbit: During the last weeks old Keplers were good enough to predict MIR's passes. Gradually the altitude decreased a little bit. Undoubtedly the newly arrived Pr-M15 will alter MIR's orbit to a higher orbit soon. The MIR complex can be observed visually these days in the evening hours. During the first passes traffic can be heard via the VHF again. Within our range the activities of the present crew in the field of radio-amateurism are rather poor. The number of Packetradio bursts on 145.550 mc also sharply decreased, possibly -during previous flights we had the same impression- Solovyov is not such an enthousiastic radio-amateur as his colleagues Krikalyov, Manarov, Volkov, etc. Another possibility is the fact that over Western-Europe the amateur uplink frequencies on board MIR must sound like a witches' cauldron. Chris v.d. Berg, NL-9165/A-UK3202.