Space Shuttle Atlantis leaving the Mir space station during the 1995 STS-71 mission.
FIRE AND COLLISION
The most difficult and dangerous space missions since the first Moon landings and Shuttle flights were the expeditions aboard the Russian Mir space station. The Shuttle–Mir program was a collaboration between the United States and Russia during which Space Shuttles docked with Mir and US astronauts spent considerable periods on board the space station. During seven manned expeditions, Americans spent almost 1000 days in orbit. The collaboration saw the first American astronaut launched aboard a Soyuz and the first Russian cosmonaut flown on a Space Shuttle.
The first phase of the collaboration began with the launch of Shuttle STS-60 in February 1994, with cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev on board Discovery. Although the Shuttle did not dock with Mir, there was a video link with the three cosmonauts on board. A year later the first female to command a Shuttle flight, Eileen Collins, flew Discovery alongside Mir. This time Russian cosmonaut Vladimir Titov was on board the Shuttle. A few months later astronaut Norm Thagard took off in a Soyuz capsule with Vladimir Dezhurov and Gennady Strekalov to visit Mir. He remained there for 115 days. They returned in July on Space Shuttle Atlantis, which carried out the first Shuttle–Mir docking after delivering two replacement cosmonauts. In 1995 the Shuttle delivered a new Docking Module and new solar arrays.
The following year the US maintained a significant presence on Mir. Shannon Lucid stayed for six weeks, up to September 1996. John Blaha took her place until the following January. Then Jerry Linengar stayed until May. While on board he faced one of an astronaut’s worst nightmares—a fire in space.
There was a crew of six on board Mir at the time, February 1997. Usually they ate in shifts, but since that day was Russian Army Day they took a meal together. After the meal it was cosmonaut Aleksandr Lazutkin’s routine task to reload a so-called oxygen candle in the Kvant Module. The oxygen generator uses three lithium perchlorate candles each day. When heated, they generate extra oxygen. As Lazutkin floated away after performing the task, he heard a hiss and then saw sparks quickly forming a flame. Reinhold Ewald, a European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut, saw it and shouted “Pozhar,” meaning “Fire.” Vasily Tsibilyev echoed his call: “Pozhar. Pozhar.” Commander Korzun arrived with a fire extinguisher and the others grabbed one, too. The fire was growing. Black smoke was beginning to form. Lazutkin tried to switch off the device but there was no response. He threw a wet towel on it but it swiftly burned. Molten metal was dripping from it and the flame was now reaching toward Mir’s hull. If the hull became breached they would die in seconds; they all remembered Soyuz 11. Smoke stung Korzun’s eyes as he flipped the fire extinguisher to “foam” and depressed the button. Nothing happened. He shouted: “Everyone to the oxygen masks, everyone stay in pairs.” He then ordered Lazutkin to prepare the ship—meaning one of the two Soyuz capsules docked at each end of Mir. The second Soyuz could not be reached through the fire. The alarm sounded. The flames were now 0.6 meters (2 ft.) long and growing. Someone shouted: “Where’s Jerry?”
Jerry was almost asleep in the Spektr Module. He unstrapped himself, asking: “Is it serious?” Ewald rushed into the Kristall Module to get more oxygen masks. “It’s serious. It’s serious.” Tsibilyev and Linengar entered the Piroda Module to get more fire extinguishers but could not get them off the wall. So they moved to the Kvant 2 Module to get an extinguisher from there. Korzun was still fighting the fire and screaming for more extinguishers. By this time Lazutkin had reached the Soyuz and closed the hatch so that the smoke did not prevent their means of escape. By now the Kvant Module was dark and smoke filled, but Korzun knew he must go back and fight the flames, which now appeared as an ominous glow through the thick fumes. This time he flipped the extinguisher to “water” and pointed the jet at the base of the hissing, spluttering flame. All too soon the extinguisher failed. “I need more,” he shouted.
All Mir crews trained for an emergency evacuation. Lazutkin was preparing a Soyuz in case they had to abandon the space station. Valery Korzun, Aleksandr Kaleri and Reinhold Ewald’s escape lay on the other side of the flame and smoke, in the shape of the second Soyuz craft. No one had reached it yet. If they had to escape, it was their only hope. Korzun kept the water jet on the flame. Thankfully it started shrinking. Through the smoke, the flame subsided. Slowly the smoke started to clear as Mir’s air conditioning took over. Mir’s wall was found to be badly scorched, but the hull was still intact. Linengar was succeeded by Michael Foale, who had to face his own crisis on Mir.
In the summer of 1995 Michael Foale had been a member of Shuttle mission STS-63, Discovery’s first rendezvous with Mir. About this time two of NASA’s proposals for Mir astronauts, Scott Parazynski and Wendy Lawrence, were rejected as being unsuitable; one was too tall and the other was too short. Foale did not particularly want to go to Mir. He had in mind a trip to the International Space Station that was being planned. But while on a business trip to Star City he was told by someone that they had heard he would be coming to train there in a few weeks. “Huh?” was his reply, before he became, in his own words, “pretty angry.” Although he did not know it, NASA had agreed to send him to Mir. He arrived at Mir on May 17, 1997, on the Shuttle Atlantis. Later, when commenting on Mir, he said diplomatically: “The condition of Mir is not the same as the Space Station.” Some Americans have said it smelled like a musty wine cellar, others that it smelled of sweat. There are cables and air ducts everywhere. Once on board, Foale was taken to see the site of the fire. No doubt he hoped that nothing like that would happen during his stay.
Six weeks into Foale’s mission, it was decided to test a new control system for docking an unmanned Progress supply spacecraft. To do this they undocked a Progress already attached to Mir and backed it off, intending to use the new system to bring it back. When the Progress was about 4.4 miles (7 km) away, Tsibilyev took over manual control. He fired its thrusters to slow the approach. Although he was watching on a television screen, the Progress was approaching from below and he could see it against the Earth’s clouds. Foale, holding the laser rangefinder, tried to see it from Kvant, but still could not make it out. Nobody could see the Progress, which was now 1.6 miles (2.5 km) distant.
It seemed to be coming in too slowly. It was only two minutes from the docking. It should have been visible by now. Tsibilyev put the brakes on, preparing for a hold point 400 meters (1312 ft.) away. Where was it? Suddenly Lazutkin saw it emerge from behind a solar panel. It was big. Too big and too close. It was heading for base block. At 150 meters (492 ft.) away Lazitkin shouted a warning: “It’s coming in too fast.” It was moving along the station, passing Kvant. Lazutkin shouted: “It’s moving past. Find Foale, get into the ship [the Soyuz].” Then Tsibilyev shouted: “Oh Hell,” as he realized that a collision was inevitable.
The Progress crumpled a solar panel as it impacted. Mir shuddered. Then it struck the Spektr Module before rubbing along the side of Mir and moving away into space, tumbling end over end. The master alarm sounded. The hull had been breached, and Mir was leaking. Foale felt the pressure drop in his ears. Pressure was down to 600 millibars. At 540 millibars you can lose consciousness. The leak was in Spektr, and Lazutkin was gathering up the cables that entered the module and prevented its hatch from closing. The pressure was falling. They had to get the Soyuz craft ready. Things were getting frantic. They could not get Spektr’s hatch to close, so Foale and Lazutkin went to search for a replacement hatch door.
After the collision, Mir was spinning at about a degree a second. Ground Control was concerned, asking them what was the spin rate. Foale moved quickly to the window and held his thumb against it, looking to the stars beyond to estimate a rough spin rate, which he relayed back down to the ground. They had to stop the spin, and that involved firing Mir’s maneuvering thrusters in so-called “blind mode.” They activated what they thought were the correct set of thrusters, and Mir ceased spinning. But they knew they had to start Mir slowly spinning in the correct manner again, so that the solar panels would remain pointing toward the Sun as it orbited the Earth. If they could not achieve this they would run out of power. But no one had been trained to do it. Then they lost all power and contact with the ground.
To get Mir spinning again they decided to use the working thrusters on one of the docked Soyuz craft. Foale suggested they should fire them in translation mode (usually used for moving the spacecraft) and not rotation mode (used for rotating it). Firing the thrusters in translation mode would have the greatest effect in turning Mir. But it was still risky, and in any case Foale would be the first to admit that he was not a Mir expert. If they were wrong or made a mistake, they could run down the Soyuz’ fuel supply and jeopardize its use as an escape option. In the end they decided to fire a Soyuz thruster to see what effect it had on Mir’s orientation. But there was a problem, and it could be a big one.
It was impossible to disconnect the Soyuz from Mir’s power supply, and then activate the Soyuz, if Mir’s power supply was dead. Fortunately, Tsibilyev had disconnected Soyuz just before Mir’s power failed, which meant he could operate its thrusters. Tsibilyev fired the thrusters and Foale observed the effect from the window. Slowly they worked out an effective procedure. To restore power to Mir they had to turn its solar panels toward the Sun, but it was orbital night. They looked at the darkened Earth. Where would the Sun rise? Then they saw some faint light streamers on the horizon. Foale said: “Looks like we need to get the station over there.” By trial and error they tried to turn Mir in the right direction. They looked at the batteries; they were charging. It seemed that they had done it. Now they had to get the systems in the base block working—especially the carbon dioxide scrubbers, as carbon dioxide levels had been increasing.
After power and some semblance of order were established they organized a sleeping pattern. Someone had to be on watch at all times, but the rest needed to sleep. They would achieve nothing, and make mistakes, if they were too tired. They had to move dead batteries from the dead modules and charge them up in the base block, keeping a set of charged batteries in case they lost solar power again. After about 30 hours they had the base block working again, and after 48 hours, to their relief, the toilet, too.
A week after the collision—a week that was spent getting the power supply sorted—Ground Control suggested they undertake an “internal spacewalk” into the Spektr Module to assess the damage. They could certainly do with the power from Spektr’s solar panels, which was routed through the module. It seemed that only one of the four panels had been damaged by the collision. They needed the power from the other three. Engineers on the ground were working on a design for an adapter to be built into a hatch, which would allow electricity to be cabled out.
The crew prepared the spacesuits and worked on the procedures for the repair. In the meantime another Progress craft came up, this time docking successfully using the standard control system. It carried some much appreciated mail, as well as supplies and equipment for the internal spacewalk.
During the preparations it was assumed that two Russians would carry out the internal spacewalk. However, Tsibilyev developed a heart murmur, which resulted in Michael Foale being given the role of undertaking the spacewalk in a Russian spacesuit. Before the spacewalk could proceed, about 100 cables running through the base block to Kvant 2 had to be disconnected so that the internal hatches could be closed. Some of the cables were connected to the gyroscopes that controlled Mir’s orientation. Only two days before the planned spacewalk one of the cables was disconnected out of sequence, causing Mir to go into a big tumble as the gyroscopes spun down. Technically, it was a more serious power-down situation than the one that followed the collision.
At this point mission controllers realized that they had been pushing the crew too hard, and they were also worried about Tsibilyev’s mental condition. They decided that the internal spacewalk would be performed by the next crew, whose arrival was brought forward a week, shortening the crew overlap time and canceling the flight of an ESA astronaut due to visit Mir.
The next crew, Mir Expedition 24, arrived, composed of Anatoli Solovyov and Pavel Vinogradov. In subsequent weeks they performed the internal spacewalk, although they were unable to completely restore the power. Foale then made an exterior spacewalk to assess damage. The leak was never fixed.
The night before they left Mir it is reported that Tsibilyev and Lazutkin stayed up late autographing and stamping stationery, photographs and letters to take back home to sell. Foale estimated that they only had about two hours sleep and that it was an irresponsible thing to do.
After the emergencies, the US Congress considered whether the Americans should abandon the Mir collaboration program out of concern for the astronauts’ safety, but NASA Administrator Dan Goldin chose to carry on. In June 1998 the final US-Mir astronaut, Andy Thomas, left the space station aboard the Shuttle Discovery.
The 39th, and final, manned mission to Mir was Soyuz TM-30, launched in April 2000. Given sufficient resources Mir could perhaps have been patched up and helped to continue, but Russia’s commitment to the International Space Station and its limited resources meant that it had to be canceled. Mir was brought back to Earth on March 23, 2001, near Fiji.
TIMELINE
| 1994 | 6 February Sergei Krikalev becomes the first cosmonaut to fly on the Space Shuttle (STS-60), when it approaches the Mir Space Station |
| 1995 | 16 March Norman Thagard becomes the first astronaut to be welcomed aboard Mir |
| May Mir is reconfigured to receive the US Space Shuttle | |
| 29 June Space Shuttle docks with Mir, becoming the biggest manmade satellite to orbit the Earth | |
| 1996 | 22 March The Shuttle STS-76 blasts off for Mir. Among the crew is astronaut Shannon Lucid, the first woman to live on the station |
| 1997 | 23 February Crew of Mir experience a severe fire on board |
| 25 June A Soviet Progress supply craft collides with Mir while docking, causing Mir to lose cabin pressure and spin out of control | |
| 2000 | 4 April The final manned mission to Mir, Soyuz TM-30, is launched |
| 2001 | 23 March Parts of the Mir space station are visible as they burn out on entry into the Earth’s atmosphere |