MIRNEWS.348 2 MARCH 1997 Soyuz-TM24 made happy landing: On 2.03.1997 at 0644UTC the returncapsule of the S-TM24 made a safe landing in Kazakhstan not far from Arkalyk (47degr49min North; 69degr24min East). At abt 4 mins later the first heli copter of the search- and rescue team reached that position. The returnoperation and landing took place without problems. During the returnoperation S-TM24 communicated via the Eastern trackingstations in Russia and probably Altair-2 over 96 dgs East. Obviously Altair-1 was (or: is?) not operational. Last week of MIR'97 and Main Expedition MIR 22: The fire in the night from 22 to 23.02 put its stamp on this last week due to the pollution of the MIR's atmosphere during the first days and the extra attention the crew had to give to the damaged oxygen-generator and cabels. For a long time there was the smell caused by the fire. One of the cosmonauts spoke about the smell of 'roasted turkey'. Some crewmembers suffe red from some irritation of the bronchia, a dry throat and sleeping problems. Nobody was hurt with the exception of Korzun who had a very small burn on his hand. Ewald had alrea dy executed the majority of the MIR'97 experiments and the events did not significantly influence that program. German projectmanagers were satisfied about the successful results and conclusion of the mission. During this week there has been a lot of radiotraffic on 2 frequencies simultanuously: the Russians used 143.625 mc and Ewald and Linenger 130.165 mc. For some planned TV sessions, i.e. for the the RTL children sprogramme Captain Bluebear and about a concours for drawings by children with the wife of the German President Herzog they did not use the geostationary satellites but direct TV trans ceivers on lower frequencies. For phone during these sessions Ewald used the UKW-2 130.165 mc. Siriusses: The new crew, Tsibliyev and Lazutkin, the 23d M.E. to MIR, and Jerry Linenger will have to do a lot of work in the near future. In fact there are still a lot of experiments in the framework of MIR'97 to be done: this had been planned and this work got the designation MIR'97E, the letter 'E' standing for 'Extension'. Progress-M33: This old freighter is still flying autonomously until her 2d docking at MIR. That will take place on 4.03.97. Tsibliyev got orders to control the approach and docking manually with the remote-control system TORU. There has also been an instruction to leave Pr-M33's hatch closed after docking. Kaleri asked TsUP to consider the possibility to open the hatch and to use the still available room in the spherical part of Pr-M33 to stow stuff no longer needed: especially the considerable amount of human waste. During the long period with a crew of 6 the quantity of this increased enormously. Chris v.d. Berg, NL-9165/A-UK3202.