Word: cosmonautics
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...station's computer suddenly quit, sending the entire hydra-headed Mir into a slow roll. This swung its solar panels out of alignment with the sun, causing power to flicker and fade, and with it the TV monitor Solovyev was using to steer the cargo ship. But the veteran cosmonaut stayed cool, flying the craft blind until it was safely docked. That, said James van Laak, one of NASA's Mir managers, "was an excellent piece of piloting...
...bureau last November--just in time to cover the crash of Russia's unmanned Mars probe. Meier's prescient reporting, including a prediction last spring that Mir was star-crossed, has won him few friends in the Russian space community. Annoyed by Meier's detailed accounts of the debacles, cosmonaut Sergei Krikalyov once growled at him, "The West must understand that this isn't a soap opera...
While bouncing supply ships off his space station, cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev found time to star in a commercial. The fruits of his labor premiere Friday when Israel's Channel Two runs an ad for Tnuva, an Israeli brand of long-life milk, featuring Tsibliyev drinking a floating blob of it on the Mir space station. Hope Tsibliyev is getting royalties ? Russia is still considering withholding his flight bonus for his orbital fender-bender...
...Spektr's solar panels, the space station has been limping along at half power--a situation that, if unremedied, would make it impossible to keep Mir operating as a research station. Rather than abandon Mir, the Russians worked out a way the crew could fix it: Tsibliyev and fellow cosmonaut Alexander Lazutkin would put on space suits and take an "internal eva"--an indoor space walk--to reattach the cables. The power lines would then be passed through a replacement hatch that was sent up aboard a supply rocket earlier this month...
Tsibliyev's service record bears her out. At 43, he's a veteran air force pilot, a graduate of the three-year Gagarin academy at Star City and a cosmonaut with 10 years' experience. In 1993 and 1994 he spent 197 days on the Mir station and completed five space walks. When he returned, he was awarded the country's highest honor: Hero of Russia. He also learned that his sister had died while he was aloft. In a melancholy coincidence, he will be told when he lands this time that his stepfather has died, news that has been kept...