Word: station
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...When Sasha told you a piece of equipment was going to work, it usually did. Shortly before midday, the Mir crew gathered in the main module, and Tsibliyev sent a command to the Progress vehicle, instructing it to open its electronic-eye camera and train its gaze on the station. The camera responded, and moments later, the TV monitor, as promised, flickered to life. Tsibliyev and Lazutkin seemed pleased; Foale was decidedly less...
...wasn't just that the image was fuzzy, which it was. And it wasn't just that it sparkled with static, which it did. It was that the mammoth Mir station, the putative target in this orbital skeet shoot, was all but invisible. The screen was filled with an image of a mottled Earth rolling below the station, while a tiny, pixilated smudge--Mir itself--vanished and reappeared as it flew from the white clouds to the black oceans and back again. Tsibliyev, however, saw even this small target as a good target. With little hesitation, he engaged one joystick...
...Foale watched the screen, Lazutkin watched the window and Tsibliyev worked his sticks, Mir grew steadily larger on the TV. Tsibliyev picked up a stopwatch and began to click off blocks of time. Measuring the solar panels of the station as they grew larger against a grid overlying the screen and making some quick calculations with the watch, he could estimate how fast the spacecraft was closing. Judging by Tsibliyev's apparent calm, Foale reckoned things were going well...
Nothing happening at the windows, however, did not mean nothing happening on the screen. Following Tsibliyev's now worried gaze, both Lazutkin and Foale could see that the station had all at once become huge, practically filling the screen at a distance of barely 150 ft. from Progress. "Try to get another range!" Tsibliyev shouted to both crewmen. As Foale sped toward Kvant, Lazutkin looked out his window and froze. There, at last, seemingly at arm's length, was the fast-closing Progress. "There it is already!" he shouted...
...when Foale entered the spherical transfer node that connects the main module to Soyuz and the four other modules, he felt and heard a sudden, sickening thud. Somewhere on the outside of one of the station's modules, Progress had hit fast and hard. An instant later, a deafening Klaxon went off, a signal that Mir's electronic brain was also aware of the impact...