Word: astronaut
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...superbly executed internal space walk, Mir's new commander, Anatoli Solovyev, and his flight engineer, Pavel Vinogradov, floated into the airless lab and installed a new cable system that will provide electricity to Spektr and the rest of the power-thirsty station. "This is a super day," exulted NASA astronaut Michael Foale, who waited out the space walk inside Mir's Soyuz re-entry vehicle, the crew's lifeboat in case they had to abandon ship. "Well done, everybody...
...turned out to be just another technical glitch. The Russian Space Agency reported that the generators had overheated, but that the two cosmonauts and one astronaut had managed to cool them down again. After this latest mishap the crew settled down for a good night's sleep...
Still, the new cosmonauts were nothing if not confident. Their first tasks are to boost the station's electric power and reopen Mir's damaged Spektr module, site of U.S. astronaut Michael Foale's experiments. Ever since an errant Progress supply capsule slammed into it in June, Spektr has been completely sealed off and the cables to its solar panels severed, cutting Mir's electric power in half...
Maybe they don't have a size 2 in Russia. Astronaut Wendy Lawrence, who was to be the next American to live on Mir, the Russian space station, won't be going because, at 5 ft. 3 in., she's too short to fit into the Russian space suits. Her place will be taken by David Wolf, who's 5 ft. 10 in.--tailor-made for the bulky suits in case he's called upon to take a walk outside...
That's what the U.S. is starting to wonder as well. Joint operations aboard Mir were originally designed to give American astronauts space-station experience prior to the launch of a new international space station in 1998 and to keep the Russians engaged in a high-profile cooperative project. But a series of mishaps on the creaky, 11-year-old Mir over the past six months has raised questions about the station's safety, threatening to send space cooperation into what may turn out to be an uncontrolled spin of its own. Some U.S. legislators, reflecting widespread public exasperation, want...