MIRNEWS.217

Soyuz-TM19 launched for flight to MIR-spacestation:

S-TM19 started from Baykonur on 1.07.94 at 1224UTC.
S-TM19 has a crew of two: Yuriy Malenchenko and Tolgat Musabayev.
For a long time the status of this flight was unknown:
Musabayev's native country is Kazakhstan, but he was supposed
to fly as an officer of the Russian airforce. Now the flight
has been announced as a Russian-Kazakh expedition. Russia
paid for the preparations and Kazakhstan will pay a contribution
for Musabayev's activities on board MIR.
All went well during the launch and the first day of the
flight. The cosmonauts use the callsign Agat-1 and Agat-2. The
crew has no problems with micro-gravity and space sickness.
During the 3d orbit at 1527UTC the ship came in our range.
Malenchenko reported that all was going according to plan and
the results were positive. The pressure of the atmosphere on
board was 803 mm. Already during the next pass (orb. 4,
1656UTC) Malenchenko reported the first 2 orbitcorrections accomplished
as needed and without any problems.
During the following pass (orb. 5, 1837UTC) Malenchenko announced
that the 3d orbitcorrection would take place at 18 hrs
47mins and 45 secs UTC.
As usual during such flights: radiocontact with TsUP on 121.-
750 mc and telemetry and beacons on 166, 165 and 922.755 mc.

Progress-M23:

As soon as TsUP was sure that all went well with
S-TM19 the undocking of Pr-M23 was possible and took place on
2.07.94 at 0841UTC. The landing of the VBK (ballistic return
capsule) had to take place on 2.07.94 at 1500UTC at 150 KM
North East of the town Orsk, within Russian territory, so no
need to pay import duties.

Estimated docking day and time of S-TM19 with MIR:

3.07.94 at 1404UTC, so just after LOS for us after the first
pass of MIR and S-TM19 for our position.

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