MIRNEWS.181    22 JULY 1993

SOYUZ-TM16:

SAFE AND SOFT LANDING AT 064200UTC.

S-TM16 landed safely in near the city Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhst-
an. The ballistic section of Professor Ivanov again deserves
admiration for their excellent work: the landing took place 23
seconds later than calculated. During this flight the crews of
MIR and S-TM16 as well had to do somewhat extra in this field
for at the moment of undocking the objects were out of range
of NIP (measurement points on earth). So they had to take care
for the actual attidudes during undocking and thereafter.
Data for this operation they got during radiotraffic with TsUP
on 21.07.93. Just after the separation of the Lifecompartment
(BO) and the Motorblock from the Landingmodude (SA) the SA
entered the dense layers of the atmosphere at 061817UTC sur-
rounded by the fire of the the plasma. At a distance of appr.
400 KM the crew on board MIR was able to observe this through
porthole nr. 9. At 062655UTC the main parachute opened and the
landing took place at 064200UTC.
So the crew of the 13th Main expedition to MIR, Manakov and
Polishchuk, and the French 'spacionaute' Haignere accomplished
their flights. H. was able to execute the French scientific
program Altair. The last days of his flight he felt tired due
to the huge amount of work, which was necessary to get a
maximum profit of such an expensive flight. H. was very satis-
fied about his work on board but also about his activities as
a radio-amateur and he was very grateful to make a lot good
QSO-s with French and other amateurs.

MIR:

On board MIR are now the cosmonauts Tsybliyev and Sere-
brov. Their official calls are not 'Ceres' as has been publi-
shed earlier, but respectively Sirius-1 and 2. Their calls for
radio-amateur activities are resp. R3MIR and R4MIR.
Ts. en S. will work in open space 3 times in September this
year to accomplish the transfer of the solarbatteries from the
Kristall-module to Kvant-1.

In a next MIR-report I hope to give attention to the last days
of the presence of 5 cosmonauts on board MIR.

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