SPACEWALKS ON MIR
1997
AUGUST 22
Cosmonauts Vinogradov and Solovyov did an internal spacewalk
to restore some of the power lost in the June
25 collision between Spektr and a Progress
supply vehicle. The collision punctured a hole in Spektr and the module
had to be sealed of. 4 solar panels had to be disconnected to seal of Spektr,
which caused the Mir power supply to drop by almost 50%, leaving only enough
power for the life support systems and other critical systems. The mission
was to reconnect 11 power cables disconnected when the Spektr was sealed
off from the rest of Mir.
The cosmonauts ventured inside the Node
and sealed of all the modules (so that they would
not loose any valuable air pressure during depressurization in the Node).
They then started to depressurize the Node. But one of Vinogradovs
gloves was leaking so they had to repressurize the Node and get a new glove.
They depressurized and when the air pressure got near 0 they opened the
hatch to Spektr. To connect the 11 cables to the rest of Mir they had brought
with them a new special hatch. The cables would be connected to
the hatch and they would later be able to connect cables to the other side
of the hatch from the Node, letting the power once again flow from Spektrs
3 functioning solar panels.
The cosmonauts ventured inside Spektr and found frozen
bubbles of soap floating around, other then that Spektr seemed to be intact.
The 11 power cables was connected to the new hatch, but not without trouble,
some of the cables was so small that they were hard to grab with the bulky
space suit gloves. The stations only vacuum cleaner, scientific gear and
some of Michael Foale's belongings was also brought back. A search
for the hole(s) in Spektr was also conducted but without success of finding
any hole.
Pictures from the internal spacewalk
is not available because Mir did not have enough power to operate the cameras.
During the spacewalk Foale was inside the Descent module of the
Soyuz. (Soyuz is the vehicle
they use to get to and from Mir and also serves as a rescue ship) If something
had happened the cosmonauts would have gone back to the Node and then into
the (already depressurized) Orbital module of the Soyuz spaceship. They
would have repressurized the module, taken of their space suits and joined
Foale inside the Descent module. They would then have left Mir and returned
to Earth.
OCTOBER 1
Info: Atlantis has delivered U.S astronaut
David Wolf to Mir along with supplies and is picking up Michael Foale.
Astronaut Scott Parazynski and cosmonaut Vladimir Titov
did a spacewalk from Atlantis to retrieve 4 "suitcases" from the exterior
of the docking module, the cases was fastened outside the module in March
1996. The cases contained paint samples, fibers, metals and other materials.
The experiment was designed to test the effects of cosmic rays and particles
on the various materials on the cases, to see if some were suitable to
be used on the ISS.
This was the first time a person outside the U.S. space
program did a spacewalk from the shuttle. Early in the spacewalk Parazynski's
had a problem with the tether not wanting to retract, this resulted in
20 feet of tether floating around them, so they were instructed to use
the Russian way of moving around, manually latching the tether along points
on the spacecraft. They managed to get the 4 cases weighing about 25 Kg
each back to the shuttle and left a 55 Kg cone at the docking module. This
cone might be used later to seal the hole around the damaged solar panel
on Spektr, if that is where the hole is.
During the spacewalk they also got to test the attitude
control capabilities of the simplified aid for EVA rescue (SAFER) unit.
This unit is simply a little backpack with small rockets on it powered
by nitrogen. In case an astronaut gets loose from his spacecraft he can
just glide back with the use of this backpack.
NOVEMBER
3
Anatoly Solovyov and flight engineer Pavel Vinogradov
did a 6 hour long spacewalk, lasting 30 minutes more then planned. The
spacewalk was delayed for two hours because mission control did not receive
data from Solovyov's suit, this was not considered as a big problem so
the spacewalk was continued as planned. Their mission was to dismantle
an outdated solar panel on the Kvant module. The
panels power output had been dropping as the panel had been getting older,
the panel was delivered to the station along with Kvant in 1987.
U.S. astronaut David Wolf was inside Mir and told the
computer to fold up the solar panel. The cosmonauts then dismantled the
panel and fastened it to the outside of the Core
module. A small piece of the solar panel was cut off to be sent back to
earth for inspections.
The cosmonauts also put a plug in the core module of Mir,
so that they could later install a Vozduk cap (vacuum device) that helps
clean the stations air for carbon dioxide.
The cosmonauts also put into orbit a one third scale
replica of the Soviet Sputnik, the world's first orbiting satellite, which
was launched 40 years ago. The model contained electronic equipment made
by French schoolchildren to issue radio signals like the original Sputnik.
NOVEMBER
6
 |
Cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Anatoly Solovyev ventured
outside the station and attached a new solar panel to the Kvant module
where they had removed one on November 3. The new solar panel came up with the
docking module on sts-74, and had since then been stowed there.
The cosmonauts took the panel from the outside of the module and attached it to the Kvant
module. U.S. astronaut David Wolf was inside Mir and gave the computer
instructions to unfold the panel. The panel only unfolded about halfway,
so the cosmonauts had to open the panel manually. |
