MIRNEWS.150    15 OCTOBER 1992

MIR-ROUTINE:

In this period almost all passes of MIR for our position occur during the
nighthours. So results of monitoring VHF are poor. During the last 2 weeks
conversations reveal the normal routine work of the MIR-crew: shooting pictures
and TV-images of agricultural areas within the CIS, the production of
semi-conductor materials in the Gallar-oven, adjusting the stations attitude,
repairing girodynes and lifesupport systems, etc.

COMMUNICATIONS:

2 weeks ago TsUp met problems with the use of the tracking station Yevpatoriya
on the Crimea. Possibly to be ready to be able to communicate with MIR during
extra gaps in communications, the former tracking ship K.G.Dobrovolskiy left
St.aPetersburg and called at Rotterdam appr. 4 Oct. 1992. TsUP managed to arrange
the use of more TDRS-s a few days later and the K.G.D. returned to St.aPetersburg
after a visit of Hamburg.aOn 9.10.92 TsUP told the cosmonauts that as of that day
they could use more new SR-s (TDRS-es) enabling them to communicate with TsUP
the whole day. A new geostationary satellite is active over 23 degrees West (Kosmos-2209).
No further details as of yet.aMy colleague Peter monitored traffic via Altair in which a long
discussion could be heard about 'communication problems'. I still have to translate and
analyse that traffic.

ADDITONAL INFORMATION ABOUT 4TH EVA:

During this EVA on 15.09.92 the cosmonauts did not, as has been suggested in
some press-reports, install an androgynous dockingdevice on Module-T (Kristall).
The Kristall was already equipped with this docking system (ASTP-89) during
launch. In their 4th EVA the crew installed a Kursantenna to make dockings to
that docking port possible. Therefor Kristall has to be redocked from the
lateral to the axial port of the Transitionsection (P.Kh.O.) of the MIR-complex.ate
Soyuz-TM16 will be the first object to dock to the modified ASTP docking device.
ABis will be in January 1993.

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