repairs.
The recovery plan involved charging all the available batteries from the functioning solar panels. The charged batteries would be used to power the base block’s guidance and control systems and then the other modules, the whole process taking two days. TsUP wanted the cosmonauts to put on spacesuits, enter Spektr and jury-rig a power supply there, then they could find and patch the hole which they calculated would be 3cm wide.
During the night of 26–27 June Mir lost all power due to a malfunction of the surge protectors which prevented the batteries from charging. TsUP wanted them to test the gyrodynes which drained the batteries and caused the central computer to crash. They lost all power and the crew had to begin the recovery process all over again.
By 28 June the batteries had recharged sufficiently to return powertomostofbaseblock. Therestofthe stationwould staydark until the four big solar arrays on Spektr could be reconnected. Foale improvised a movie theatre using a computer monitor and a video player, and they watched the film Apollo 13 together. Tsibliyev:
“We felt that, especially from a psychological point of view, their situation was much worse than ours – we at least had a spaceship which could get us home. With Apollo 13 they had to fly all the way around the moon in order to get back to the earth.”
Later, by email, they received a quote from Jim Lovell himself comparing the two flights:
“I understand how these guys feel, because I’ve been there as well. I know their courage and bravery.”
By 30 June NASA was considering bringing Foale back because he couldn’t do any scientific work while Spektr was sealed off.
TsUP needed to know which cables ran through the hatch to Spektr but the Russian record keeping was not up to NASA standards.
They planned an Intra Vehicular Activity (IVA) by Tsibliyev and Lazutkin while Foale remained in the Soyuz. Once inside Spektr they would reconnect the cables linking the modules which should restore the power supply. On the ground they were working out the details, especially how to modify the bulky suits to get through the narrow hatchways. At 2 am on 1 July Tsibliyev heard a sound like a muffled explosion coming from Spektr. He saw a cloud of flakes hanging around it which glistened in the sunlight. By 2 July they had gone.
Without a working ventilation system condensation was forming in the darkened modules, so Foale and Lazutkin rigged hoses to blow air into the affected modules.
On 5 July a Progress was launched, the gyrodynes were powered up to put the station in the correct position for docking and on 7 July the Progress docked safely.
An EKG test on Tsibliyev revealed a heart beat irregularity of the kind prompted by stress – Foale would have to do the IVA instead of him.
During the IVA the node was to be depressurized. The cables were to be divided into three groups: those to be deconnected a week before, those a day before and those on the day. Lazutkin made a mistake when he deconnected the wrong cable – it carried power to the main computer which crashed and the batteries began to drain.
By dawn on 17 July the station had lost all power because the Ground Control was too slow in reacting.
Phil Engelauf was the Missions Operations Directorate (MOD) flight director at NASA. When he read the transcripts he concluded:
“If you read these transcripts, the crew calls down and says the vehicle is not performing correctly,” Engelauf remembers. “It goes right by the ground. They just say, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s nice.’ About four or five times Vasily calls down and says, ‘Hey, the computer is spitting out garbage.’ And the ground says, ‘Well, we’ll look at it next pass.’ This goes on for four passes. It gets progressively worse, until they lose power altogether. These are classic symptoms of what is called cockpit resource mismanagement. It’s a fairly classic case of [the ground] missing the first road sign and then driving right off the cliff.”
Not until a pass at 2:29 that morning, nearly five hours after Lazutkin disconnected the cable, did it finally dawn on Koneev that the station was in crisis. Engelauf wrote in his analysis:
“The crew finally told the ground, ‘Well, we have [disconnected those] cables.’ The ground was totally surprised and asked what cable they talking about. This yielded a discussion in which TsUP finally grasped the situation onboard.”
The implications for the International Space Station were alarming. These were the same Russian ground controllers who would be working with NASA astronauts on ISS in two short years. Engelauf’s conclusions were blistering:
“There appears to be an inability on the part of TsUP, even when [telemetry] is available, to identify even major problems, like a loss of a major attitude sensor component,” he wrote. “The ground does not appear to give credence to an evident state of concern on the part of the mission commander. The sense of team cohesiveness between the ground and onboard crew, to which we are accustomed, is absent. TsUP situational awareness is also lacking. Although they are advising the crew to power off equipment, they evidently didn’t understand the severity of the power deficit nor pursue the cause [of] it.”
TsUP decided that the IVA would be performed by the next crew who would be Anatoli Solovyov and Pavel Vinogradov, due on 7 August. They were given intensive training. The next NASA astronaut was to be David Wolf, who was given intensive EVA training in the Russian Orlan spacesuit.
The next mission was to have carried a French astronaut but it was postponed. NASA were upset to learn of this from CNN.
On 7 August the Soyuz carrying the next crew arrived and the new commander Anatoli Solovyov, docked manually.
On 14 August Tsibliyev and Lazutkin left Mir while Foale remained aboard. On 15 August the new crew flew their Soyuz around from the Kvant 2 docking port and filmed the damage.
On 18 August Progress M-35 was 170m away when the main computer crashed. Because the automatic (Kurs) system was disabled Solovyov had to use the TORU. He had it lined up at 5m when his screen went blank, so he brought it in blind.
Cosmonaut experiences a leak in his spacesuit
On 22 August they began the IVA. Burrough:
In the node, Foale helped Solovyov and Vinogradov into their suits, which were difficult to close without help. Then he swam through the adjoining hatch into the Soyuz. Behind him he locked down the hatch between
