MIRNEWS.271    5 SEPTEMBER 1995

Soyuz-TM22 linked up with MIR:

The soft docking took place on 5.09.1995 at 1026UTC. All went
well. S-TM22 docked at the forward axial docking port so at
the -X-axis (P.Kh.O.-transitionsection). From the beginning of
his flight and during the approach and docking Gidzenko
proved to be an excellent cosmonaut. The radiotraffic about
the approach could be monitored via Altair from 0950UTC.
During this session the Russians tried to switch over to TV-
images, but this attempt failed and they switched back to
speech. A couple of minutes before the docking the signals
from Altair ceased and the communications continued via Russi
an trackingstations. They also relayed TV-images of the doc
king, the opening of the hatches and the new crew entering
MIR. This took place at abt. 1201UTC. During the 1st pass
within our range from 1018-1024UT the traffic from S-TM22
could also be monitored via 121.750 Mc. This went parallel
with Altair and so it sounded like an echo. The signals via
Altair reached me somewhat later for they had to cover a
distance of abt 72000KM instead of 400KM! Quite normal but
interesting to hear this yourself. It was difficult to monitor
all traffic for MIR transmitted on 143.625Mc.

Progress-M28:

To enable S-TM22 to dock at the -X axis docking
port the freighter Pr-M28 had to separate from there. The
decision to do this was taken as soon as the Russians were
sure that all systems of S-TM22 worked well. Pr-M28 undocked
on 4.09.1995 at 0607UTC and burnt up in the atmosphere over a
designated area in the Pacific east of New Zealand.

Euromir'95:

The work during this 135 during expedition can
begin soon. A lot of experiments have to be executed. 
Monitoring MIR-traffic will be more interesting for a lot of
people for apart from Russian we can expect a lot of communi
cations between Thomas Reiter and scientists on earth in
German or English. And we also can expect a lot of traffic in
the ham-bands.

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