Word: spektr
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...million a year selling rides aboard Mir to the U.S., as well as a blow to the Kremlin's prestige. So far, though, NASA has no such plan. And for the moment, the Russians have more immediate concerns. Last month's crash poked a hole in the station's Spektr module, forcing the crew to disconnect power cables so they could isolate the now airless Spektr from the rest...
...Without 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...
...make things worse, the Russian media have been pointing fingers at him as the cause of some of the accidents, and one of his bosses has labeled him a chronic complainer. Tsibliyev was guiding the cargo ship on June 25, when it bashed into the station's Spektr module, and some Russian commentators say he may have created the problem by entering the wrong numbers into a computer. At one point last week, ABC News reported that it was Tsibliyev who yanked the wrong plug and cut off the station's power. Mir flight director Vladimir Solovyov would...
Although Russian officials are confident their ingenuity will pay off, Spektr still won't be ready for the kind of zero-G science that astronauts have been doing aboard Mir in exchange for U.S. payments of $472 million to the cash-strapped Russian space agency. That will require an "external" space walk to plug Spektr's puncture. Nor will the pressure ease on Goldin, who is already being urged by Capitol Hill to call off further visits to Mir by Americans. Joining these voices last week was Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell, also the beneficiary of a celebrated space rescue...
MOSCOW: France has decided it cannot allow a French astronaut to travel to Mir until the fresh team of cosmonauts launching August 5 can repair the station. The new team will conduct an exterior space walk to pinpoint the location of a hole in Spektr's wall, pierced after a cargo ship collided with it in June, and will work to reattach cables disconnected after the June crash. U.S. astronaut Michael Foale will not participate in either operation, but instead has been instructed to camp inside the Soyuz escape capsule until a space shuttle mission picks him up in September...