Word: spektr
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...months the battered Mir space station has been as much a ghost ship as a spaceship. Even as its crews have continued to live and work in four of its aging modules, its fifth--the once glittering Spektr lab--has remained dark and cold, ruptured by a collision with a cargo ship in June...
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...
...hear the sound of a living module," said Pavel Vinogradov excitedly after plugging in the final power cable in Spektr this morning. Just as audible was the sigh of relief from the Russian Space Agency. After enduring two last minute glitches which almost nixed the highly risky repair mission ? not to mention three months in which Mir became a byword for malfunction ? the station is close to being fully functional again. To be precise, 80 percent of power will most likely be restored...
...champagne-and-caviar time just yet for Vinagradov and his fellow cosmonauts. Not only do they have to seal off Spektr, there's also an argument back on earth over the worth of the battered module. "The Russians are eager to repair Spektr and get it back in operation," says TIME Science Writer Dick Thompson. "But American program managers don't believe that Spektr will ever be of much use ? because it could never be certified as safe." So much for a job well done. Some comfort for the Mir crew is a guaranteed place in the history books...
...charging. And with tests on the newly-repaired computer draining power rapidly, Michael Foale and the two cosmonauts aboard are anxious to get those gyrodines clicking and whirring again. When full alignment is restored, the Russian arrivals can get to what they came to do: get out to the Spektr and reconnect the power lines that could make the Mir almost whole again. That spacewalk could now happen as early as Thursday...