MIRNEWS.193    14 OCTOBER 1993

PROGRESS-M20 DOCKED TO MIR:

This freighter docked to MIR's aft docking port (Kvant-1) on
13.10.93 at 2325UTC. The approach and docking took place in
the automatic mode under observation of the crew. The docking
took place a little bit later than expected after MIR's pass
in orbit 43764 from 2309-2314UTC. During this pass the trans-
mitters of Pr-M20 still could be monitored on 922.755 mc and
in the 166 and 165 mc bands. MIR also worked with packetradio
on 145.550 mc.
During the passes in orb. 43765 (14.01 0043-0050UTC) and 43766
(0221-0227UTC) the crew and TsUP spoke about the just arrived
freighter. The crew was satified: the ship was clean and they
got the badly needed dairy-products, which they ordered only
recently.
Pr-M20 has a V.B.K. (ballistic returncapsule) on board. The
arrival of the Pr-M20 is good news for the Dutch University in
Nijmegen for she safely delivered their experiments in the
Biokrist-package.

PROGRESS-M19:

To enable Pr-M20 to dock with the complex the Pr-M19 had to
disappear. Nowadays the Russians undock the old freighter as
soon as they are sure about the right orbit and the good
functioning of the new one. So Pr-M19 separated from MIR on
12.10.1993 at 1759UTC. Before burning up in the atmosphere Pr-
M19 jettisoned the V.B.K. and this landed safely in the de-
signated area on 13.10.93 at 0022UTC.
The crew on board MIR did not go asleep but observed the whole
operation. The were enthousiastic about this interesting
event. They saw how the engines of Pr-19 worked, how the
V.B.K. separated from Pr-M19 and they even could see the
burning up of the rest of the freighter. They made a lot of
video-films and images.
During the pass in 43751, on 13.10.93 at 0135UTC they reported
about these observations to TsUP.
In the course of 13.10 they transmitted their films to TsUP
via the geostationary satellite Altair.

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