[FPSPACE] More on Mir Problem Thursday

[JamesOberg@aol.com]

JimO: Here's the stimulus of the ABC report, apparently:

Mission Control Has Contact With Mir

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
AP-NY-12-29-00 0959EST
  
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's Mir space station suffered a minor glitch in orbit 
when controllers on Earth tried but failed to tilt it so more solar panels 
would face the sun, a Mission Control spokesman said Friday. 

The complication Thursday was minor and will not affect the craft's overall 
flight worthiness, said spokesman Valery Lyndin. It was routine for Russian 
engineers, who fly the 140-ton orbiting station by remote control, he said. 

Controllers will try the maneuver again later, he said. 

Lyndin denied Russian media reports Friday that Mission Control had lost 
radio contact with the Mir, as it had earlier this week. 

``The station is under control and follows commands from the ground,'' he 
told The Associated Press. 

Mission Control lost radio contact with the aging station on Monday but 
managed to regain it Tuesday afternoon. Officials blamed the failure on a 
sudden and unexplained loss of power by Mir's batteries, motivating 
controllers to try to preserve power. 

The mishap stoked fear that the station, scheduled to be discarded in a 
controlled descent, could spin out of control and scatter debris over 
populated areas in a fiery plunge through the atmosphere. 

Controllers have had regular contact with the station since Tuesday, Lyndin 
said. Thursday's failed maneuver sought to place the station in an orbit that 
would expose the solar wings to the sun, bringing in more power. It also 
would align the craft for a planned docking with a cargo ship early next 
year. 

``Ground controllers preferred to save fuel and not repeat the maneuver,'' he 
said. 

Space officials said they would launch a cargo ship to push Mir down in a 
controlled manner on Feb. 27-28. 

In case of complications, a crew will be ready to fly to the station and 
direct the dive, Russian Aerospace Agency chief Yuri Koptev said this week. 
It takes two days to reach the station from the Earth. 

On Friday, the Interfax news agency and Russian television reported that 
Mission Control had again lost radio contact with Mir, and that the failure 
had prompted the space agency to move up the plan to send cosmonauts to the 
station to January. 

Lyndin said sending a crew to ensure a trouble-free docking with the cargo 
ship would be preferable, but added that space officials still hope to do the 
job with an unmanned cargo vessel, to cut costs. He said officials may still 
change their mind and send cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Nikolai Budarin to 
the station in January. 

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, and experts have warned it was 
risky to leave Mir uninhabited. The station had only one, 73-day mission this 
year.