MIRNEWS.287    25 JANUARY 1996

Situation on board: After strenuous efforts lasting more than
a week the cosmonauts on board MIR resolved the problems with
the coolingsysteem K.O.Kh.2V. So now more about Euromir95
experiments can be heard during radiocommunications.

Communications: For communications on VHF between TsUP and MIR
trackingstations in the USA and Germany can be used. The
German station in Oberpfaffenhofen (callsign 'Scope') can
relay traffic but sometimes communicates with MIR (Euromir95
astronaut Reiter) directly.

Plans for the near future:

1. The spacewalk (EVA), still on schedule for 8.02.1996, will
be made by Gidzenko and Reiter, so not by Gidzenko and Avdeyev
as had been suggested a few times.
2. The reliefcrew (MIR's Main Expeditin nr. 21) will start
from Baykonur on 21.02.1996 at 1233UTC with the Soyuz-TM23.
The first crew consists of captain Onufriyenko (making his 1st
flight) and Board engineer Usachov (2d flight). During their
mission they will use the callsign Skif (so Skif-1 and 2).
3. The launch of the module Priroda is still planned on 10.03,
but rumours suggest that this will be put back to the begin
ning of April 96.
4. The mission of Atlantis (STS-76) is still on schedule for
21.03.1996.

Radio-amateurtraffic from MIR:

For our region mainly on 145.550 mc and mostly with packetra
dio. Sometimes the p/r installation is in use for traffic
between TsUP and MIR on 143.625 mc. From one of the recent p/r
messages could be derived that traffic on 70 cm is still
impossible due to problems with a powersupply unit. The crew
expects that p/r traffic on 9600 baud will be possible in
about 6 months.

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