MIRNEWS.233    13 OCTOBER 1994

Failure powersupply on board MIR:

In the night from 11 to 12.10.94 the voltage of the powersup ply
sharply decreased. This failure had been caused by the
insufficient charging by solarbatteries. All systems in the base
block discontinued functioning. From this moment on it was
impossible to control the attitude of the MIR-complex. It became
impossible to aim the antenna for communications via the
geostationairy satellite. During this night a lot of
radiotraffic via 143.625 mc was monitored in which the pro blems
were reported and discussed. Opinions of Russian specia lists
are not unanimous: the VKS (Russian space forces) spoke of a
very complicated situation. Deputy Flightcontroller Blagov of
TsUP blaimed the age of the station, which is in orbit as of the
beginning of 1986, while the PRO of TsUP sounded rather
optimistic. He stated that the Euromir94 expe dition will remain
on schedule. In the night from 12 to 13 oct. Viktorenko and
Kondakova remained on duty to be able to act if necessary.
Meanwhile a lot of electric energy had been loaded and
specialists hope to be able to adjust the attitude of the
complex in such a way that the solararrays will function as
efficient as possible and that communications via the
relaysatellite will be resto red. The cosmonauts did not panic
at all: Viktorenko and Kondakova even joked about the fact that
the exchange rate of the dollar on board MIR remained stable,
which could not be said about the voltages of their powersupply
systems.

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