[FPSPACE] Reuters: Russia feared it had lost Mir space station

[JamesOberg@aol.com]

Russia feared it had lost Mir space station 14:18 12-27-00

By Andrei Shukshin

  
MOSCOW, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Russian engineers spent a nail-biting 24 hours 
when they lost contact with the Mir space station, fearing they might never 
regain control of the Earth's biggest man-made satellite, a top official said 
on Wednesday. 

Yuri Koptev, head of the space and aviation agency, said once the 130-tonne 
station suddenly stopped beaming data to ground control, his main concern was 
to make sure the ageing craft was still in one piece. 

"We were very worried that we might have lost the complex altogether," he 
told a news conference. 

"But our colleagues from the space monitoring centre...confirmed that it was 
following its usual orbit and was still complete and not an array of 
scattered bits." 

Moscow has promised to steer the craft out of orbit early next year to dump 
it safely in the Pacific. Monday's accident, when control was totally lost 
for more than 24 hours, sparked fears it might fall on populated areas. 

Officials have said that in the absence of any information from space they 
ruled nothing out, even that the 14-year-old station had been destroyed by 
space debris. 

Engineers eventually established that the black-out was due to a mysterious 
discharge of all of its batteries. 

Koptev said that as Mir's transmitters remained dead he informed President 
Vladimir Putin and the government of the situation and ordered a special crew 
to prepare for an emergency flight to the silent craft. 

Two cosmonauts were told to prepare themselves for a possible docking with 
the ungovernable, spinning station and use their capsule's engines to prevent 
Mir coming crashing down to earth. 

NO DISASTER BEFORE NEW YEAR 

Koptev said that even if their mission had failed and the station kept 
spinning down in an uncontrolled way it would not have hit land immediately. 

The crisis ended as unexpectedly as it began when computer screens at the 
ground control near Moscow began lighting up with bits of data from Mir on 
Tuesday afternoon. 

Koptev said the station had resumed sending signals when the communication 
session with the ground control overlapped with the time its solar panels 
faced the Sun and could feed energy directly to transmitters. 

Earlier exchanges were attempted when Mir was in the shadow of the Earth, he 
said. With all its batteries dead, nothing was coming through. 

Koptev said Mir was now accumulating energy and would be dumped in the 
Pacific in late February, as planned. 

A cargo craft with an extra supply of fuel to guide Mir to earth is due to go 
up before that date. If it fails to dock, the emergency crew will still have 
to blast off and conduct the operation manually, he said. 

====


Russia To Dump Mir in February      AP-NY-12-27-00 1357EST

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
  
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia will use an unmanned cargo spacecraft to safely drop the 
aging Mir into the Pacific in February, a top space official said Wednesday, 
seeking to allay fears the space station will make an uncontrolled plunge 
that could rain tons of flaming debris on populated areas. 

Russian Aerospace Agency chief Yuri Koptev angrily dismissed Communist 
demands to keep the nearly 15-year-old station in orbit, saying that a 
20-hour loss of radio contact with Mir this week was a final warning that 
time was up. 

``The latest events have shown where frivolous and emotional approaches can 
lead us,'' Koptev said. ``We must control events, not sit and pray for good 
luck.'' 

Space officials lost contact with the unmanned station on Monday evening and 
regained it, after frantic efforts, on Tuesday afternoon. They blamed the 
mishap on a sudden and still unexplained power loss. 

Koptev said the incident highlighted the wear and tear on the station. 
``Russia mustn't allow such risks because of its obligations before the 
international community, and this is why the president and the government 
have decided to discard Mir in February,'' Koptev said. 

Russia's Cabinet decided in November that Mir would come down in February. 
Officials say it will be aimed into the Pacific Ocean, 900 to 1,200 miles 
east of Australia on Feb. 27-28. 

Next month, a Progress cargo ship carrying twice the usual amount of fuel 
would be sent to the station to push it down. If that doesn't work, an 
emergency crew would be ready to blast off within 12 hours to guide the 
descent, Koptev said. He said the Cabinet would issue a formal order 
approving the plan within days. 

The government's decision has drawn criticism from Communists and others 
lamenting the loss of the last remaining symbol of Soviet space glory. 

Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya, now a Communist lawmaker, said in an interview 
with Echo of Moscow radio Wednesday that the move was a concession to NASA, 
which has urged Russia to dump Mir and concentrate its scarce funds on the 
new, 16-nation International Space Station. 

Koptev shrugged off Savitskaya's comments. ``If Mir spins out of control 
tomorrow, the president and the government will have to face the entire world 
and explain where it would fall and what damage it would inflict,'' he said. 

In an uncontrolled plunge, fragments of the 140-ton station could survive a 
fiery re-entry and land in inhabited areas instead of the ocean. Mission 
Control chief Vladimir Solovyov said Tuesday some chunks could weigh more 
than 1,500 pounds. 

Space officials recalled the embarrassment caused by a Soviet satellite that 
crashed in northern Canada in 1978. Nobody was hurt, but radioactive 
fragments were scattered over the wilderness. And in 1991, fragments of the 
Soviet Salyut-7 space station fell on the Andes Mountains region of 
Argentina, inflicting no damage but generating fears worldwide. 

The unoccupied U.S. Skylab space station fell to Earth in 1979 when its orbit 
deteriorated faster than anticipated, creating sonic booms and spreading 
debris over western Australia. No one was hurt. 

Mir has survived several accidents, including a fire and a near-fatal 
collision with an unmanned cargo ship in 1997. Its latest crews have spent 
much of their time trying to fix problems.