MIRNEWS.356    25 APRIL 1997

1st Spacewalk (EVA) MIR 23/NASA 4:

Vo chto by to ni stalo. This is the Russian analogue for 'At any cost'.
Monitoring radiotraffic during the last days I realised that those
responsible for this MIR/NASA expedition decided to stick to the EVA on
29.04.97 and this made me use this expression as a sub-title for my
report about that EVA. In fact I expected that the long sequence of
serious technical problems and consequently the enormous strain for the
crew justified the cancellation or at least a suspension of that EVA.
Officially has been announced that the situation on board is almost back
to normal and that the health condition of Tsibliyev and Linenger is such
that they can do that EVA. The EVA is on schedule for 29.04.1997 at
0450UTC (opening of the hatch) and will last 5 hours and 30 minutes.
Using spacesuits of a new design delivered to MIR by the freighter
Progress-M34, Tsibliyev and Linenger will install American experiments at
the outersurfaces of Kvant-2 (Module-D) and the SO (the docking
compartment at the Kristall (Module-T). They also will retrieve similar
experiments which had been installed there in the past. Today the
'spacewalkers' trained for that EVA. In the past the preparations for
EVA's started a long time before the planned date en during the last few
days crews always fully concentrated on the oncoming EVA. They always got
1 or 2 days off to enable them to start the EVA as fit as possible. This
time the preparations started only a few days ago and they had to use a
part of the time for maintenance and repair activities. The cosmonauts
are very tired and they yearn for a day off. Another problem during this
EVA is the communications infrastructure. There is no Luch available.
Altair-2 is still moving to the West and not operational at the moment.
In the very beginning when there were no geostationary satellites
availble for MIR-TsUP (or: Salyut - Zarya) communications Russia had a
fleet of trackingships all over the world. Of this fleet only 4 ships are
left, 2 of which are operational, but they have to remain in
St Petersburg until there are means for exploitation. It is true that TsUP
has the possiblity to use Dryden and Wallops in the USA and
Oberpfaffenhofen in Germany, but that is not enough to fill up all the
gaps in the infrastructure. Telemetry monitoring during EVA's is
essential. If all goes well Tsibliyev and Linenger can be heard while
they are on their way back to the airlock of Module-D during MIR's orbit
63941 between 1000 and 1030UTC on 29.04.

During a short interview with an American radiostation Linenger on
23.04.1997 told, that they had a rough time, but that they succeeded in
restoring the situation almost back to normal and that they all were
doing fine. About the leakages of the cooling system in Kvant-1 and the
eventual influence of ethylene glycol on the health of the crew he said
that the effects in the long run are still unknown.

Solar orbit:

In my MIRNEWS.355 I suggested that the next period in which the MIR-
complex would remain permanently in the sun was to begin in a 'few' days.
This was an error. The next solar-orbit period will be in the first week
of June.

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