MIRNEWS.126    11 APRIL 1992

SJALOM ON BOARD SHALOM (MIR):

Until today this word certainly never has been used aboard the MIR-complex, but
in a few years we can expect a period of appr. 6 days in which this word will be
flashing to and fro between MIR and TsUP. Israel is willing to pay a lot of
money to fly its own cosmonaut to MIR. The head of NPO Energiya, Yuriy Semyonov,
and a member of the Israelian cabinet signed a provisional agreement for the
flight of an Israelian citizen with the MIR station. So Israel is now also on
the list among many others, for instance Chile. We will wait and see who will go
first.

MIR STATION AMATEUR RADIO AND WHEELCHAIR MARATHON:

On April 11th 1992 a marathon started in Vladivostok. The participants are
invalids in wheelchairs and the marathon goes to St.Petersburg, so over a
distance of abt. 7500 statute miles. The marathon gets the support of the United
Nations Decade of the Invalid and has been organized by the Moscow Adventures
Club's chairman Dmitriy Shparo. Purpose of this marathon is to show invalids in
Russia not to loose hearth and to demonstrate to the Russian people that
invalids are human beings. Radio amateurs of the Adv. Club will take care for
reliable radio links: from Vladivostok to Novosibirsk via the amateur radio on
board MIR and from Novosibirsk to St. Petersburg via HF-frequencies. Control
station will be the club's station RK3KP in Moscow under command of our friend
Leonid Labutin, UA3CR. In the near future the club will organize a wheel-chair
marathon from St. Petersburg to Western Europa, with visits to the Netherlands
and UK, countries with a positive attitude to invalid people.

SERGEY KRIKALYOV:

For many months about this healthy board-engineer of the space station MIR
during the last 2 expeditions, a lot of rumours and nonsense has been dissipated
all over the world. So a lot of people know Sergey as the cosmonaut who has
been forgotten by his country and who has been left in space, suffering from a
bad health, physical as well as psychical. In a lot of countries Sergey has
been used as an expedient to work off selective indignition. (It has become
difficult to work this off now Walesa is President of Poland). Leaders in these
activities were Mexican demonstrators who besieged the Russian embassy in
Mexicocity with slogans: 'Free the political prisoner cosmonaut Krikalyov'.
Insiders and those who know Sergey personally, or like me, who daily were
ear-witnesses of his good mood, did all what was possible to bend the negative
tendency in information, but this did not help. TV-images of Krikalyov while he
left the landing-capsule increased the desinformation. Now the truth:
Krikalyov remained healthy and cheerful until his landing on 25 March 1992. A
spacewalk in the night from 20 to 21 February 1992, during which he had also to
perform the task of his commander Volkov, proved his excellent condition.
During the operation to bring Soyuz-TM13 back to earth safely Krikalyov was very
active. In TsUP we could hear his clear and self-possessed voice during the
relay of S-TM13's radiotraffic via the geostationary satellite Altair. The same
traffic also has been monitored by the Dutch amateur Peter, PE1MQC in Zuidlaren.
Immediately after the landing Krikalyov of course was dizzy and for 1 day he had
trouble with his vestibular system. Quite obvious after 312 days in
zero-gravity. Leaving the aircraft after landing on Chkalovskiy near Star City
he even he walked down the stairs almost independently. Musa Manarov visited
Sergey on March 27th 1992: nothing wrong with Sergey, he already had been
jogging.

LUCH OR ALTAIR:

The geostationary satellite (or: the channel of such a satellite) used for the
relay of MIR's and S-TM's radio traffic we thusfar called Luch. Until recently
this name was still in use, but on TsUP they use the abbreviation SR or SRT
(Sputnik Retranslyator) or the codename Altair.

Chris v.d. Berg, NL-9165/A-UK3202.