By Anatoly Vereshchyagin
KOROLYOV,
Russia (Reuters) - An unmanned Russian cargo craft successfully
docked with the Mir space station on Saturday, starting the countdown
to the destruction of the Soviet-built orbiter.
Space officials at flight control outside Moscow broke into applause
after the two vessels hooked up smoothly, and expressed confidence
that Mir would be safely ditched in the Pacific Ocean in early
March.
The 15-year-old station has become increasingly accident-prone
in recent years, and ground controllers last month feared they
had lost control of the 130-tonvessel for good when a sudden power
outage cut communications for 24 hours.
``This was a very, very important moment. Now we can control the
station,'' a relieved Yuri Semyonov, head of the Energiya corporation
which operates Mir, said of Saturday's docking.
``Not everything has gone smoothly (recently), as you know, starting
with December when we had certain problems with power supply and
orientation of the station.
``But flight control has managed to overcome these problems,''
Semyonov told a news conference. ``We've managed to do what we
had to do.'' The Progress vessel, carrying some 2.6 tons of fuel
and supplies of oxygen, docked automatically at 8:33 a.m. (12:33
a.m. EST). Two specially-trained Russian cosmonauts had been on
standby in case the procedure went wrong, ready to blast off within
two weeks to manually prepare Mir for its fiery descent.
``We have enough fuel aboard the station to be able to ditch Mir
in a safe and civilized way,'' said Vladimir Solovyov, head of
Russian flight control.
Spinning Through Space
Officials will now have to decide whether to burn up precious
fuel that is keeping Mir stable or let it rotate slowly as it
continues to orbit Earth.
``Then the issue will be to bring it back from free rotation to
a stable orientation, and maintaining this position during its
descent,'' said Semyonov. ``That will now be the most critical
moment,'' he said.
Russian television quoted one space official as saying the back
up crew would be dispatched to Mir should ground control fail
to stabilize the station.
Engineers plan to use the newly-docked cargo craft to nudge Mir
out of orbit. They plan to bring the venerable craft down in the
Pacific Ocean some 3,000 km (1,850 miles) east of New Zealand's
southern tip.
``We expect that Mir's orbit will reach 200km (125 miles) above
the Earth at the beginning of March, and then we'll be able to
start the ditching process,'' Semyonov said. Mir is currently
orbiting some 280km above Earth.
The Foreign Ministry said on Friday the station would splash down
away from major sea and air routes. Up to 40 tons of debris are
expected to reach Earth at speeds high enough to smash through
two meters (6.5 feet) of reinforced concrete.
Mir's Faded Glory
Once the jewel in the crown of the Soviet space program, Mir's
reputation has been tarnished in recent years by a spate of accidents
which, combined with a cash shortage, prompted reluctant space
officials to abandon it.
Designed with a three-year service life, Mir grabbed a host of
space endurance records following its launch in 1986, becoming
the envy of the better-funded U.S. space effort.
Kazakh cosmonaut Talbat Musabayev spent more than 30 hours in
one month working outside the station to secure his place in the
Guinness Book of Records.
And Russian Sergei Avdeyev, who spent 747 days in space, remains
the only cosmonaut in the world to have toasted the New Year three
times in orbit.
But corrosion and age also took their toll on Mir, which has suffered
a near-catastrophic collision with a cargo craft and a subsequent
onboard fire. Its crew was once threatened by failing oxygen supplies.
The string of mishaps led U.S. lawmakers to call for U.S. astronauts
to be banned from Mir.
But Mir's legacy will live on in the 16-nation International Space
Station project, which will use much of the technology that went
into Mir.
|
