MIRNEWS.239    13 NOVEMBER 1994

Progress-M25 docked at MIR-spacestation.

The freighter P-M25 docked at MIR's aft (Kvant-1) dockingport
on 13.11.94 at 0904UTC (during orb. 49926). The approach and
docking took place in the automatic mode by the system Kurs.
On board Soyuz-TM20 Viktorenko was standby with the system
TORU, but manual interference was not necessary. The operation
could be monitored via Altair between 0822 and 0904UTC. During
the next pass (orb. 49927, 1027UTC) the gentlemen on board
left the honour to give the first postdocking report to Yelena
Kondakova. Enthousiasticly she reported the airseal, the
opening of the hatch, the fact that Pr-M25 was clean and that
they enjoyed the nice smell of apples and lemons. 
Polyakov said that the Pr-M25 was an ideal freighter.

Pr-M25 delivered to the MIR-station new supplies of water,
fuel, food, spareparts for repair (among which parts for the
furnace to be used for the conclusion of the Euromir94 materi
als processing experiments) and post. Pr-M25 has not been
equipped by a VBK (Ballistic Return Capsule).

Jubilea:

In the early morning of 18.11.94 MIR -that is to say
the first part, the baseblock, launched on 19.02.1986- will
make her 50000th orbit around the Earth.
From that early beginning I tried to monitor as much as possible
all passes within range. If I was a robot and had been
able to monitor all passes this number would be 12500. But not
being a robot I needed holidays etc. Nevertheless at a rough
estimation I must have been monitoring MIR's radiotraffic
during 10000 passes. Homage to my poor ear-drums!

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