Word: solovyev
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Last Friday Spektr flickered back to life. In a 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...
...exactly. Shortly after Solovyev and Vinogradov donned their spacesuits and depressurized an airlock adjacent to Spektr in preparation for opening the airless lab's hatch, Vinogradov's left glove began leaking air. At first the cosmonauts were unconcerned, and a ground controller even joked as Vinogradov struggled to adjust his suit. "Pull it with all your proletarian force," he instructed...
...Solovyev, a veteran of four missions to Mir, and Vinogradov, a space rookie, are slated to begin undoing the damage next week with a tricky "internal" space walk. Though they've rehearsed the zero-G procedure in water tanks, they could face unexpected problems when they open Spektr's hatch--from, say, sharp-edged shards of metal and glass floating in the module since the rapid depressurization...
After they install a new hatch that was flown to Mir last month, Solovyev will squeeze into Spektr to look for the cables from its solar panels so they can be reconnected to the Mir power system. But it will be a hunt in the dark, with the only light coming from a miner's type lamp on Solovyev's helmet and a flashlight held by Vinogradov in the airlock behind...
Even if all this succeeds, Spektr can't be used until the cosmonauts patch up the damage to its skin. On Sept. 3 Solovyev and Vinogradov are booked for a second walk--this one outside Mir--during which they'll crawl around the module looking for any punctures, which they hope to seal with rubbery "hermetic patches." Spektr can then be repressurized...