MIRNEWS.279 12 NOVEMBER 1995 Radiotraffic: This traffic increases every day: MIR utilizes every avai lable window, even sometimes are at the same time 2 frequen cies in use. 143.625mc for the Russians, 130.165mc for Thomas Reiter. The radio-amateurtraffic can be heard on 145.550mc (phone, status-report in English or Packetradio) and on frequ. 145.850mc downlink phone. In the field of the geostationary satellites the Russians use Altair and the Luch over 96 degr. East. When they only used Altair the sessions lasted abt. 50 minutes. Now they sometimes switch over from Altair to Luch, which means that they can keep in touch with TsUP for almost 1.5 hours at a stretch. MIR-routine: After the -possibly provisional- repair of the leakage in the main coolingsystem (K.O.Kh-1) the 3 crewmembers are very busy with the Euromir95 program and with the prepara tions to select and to pack all what has to be send to earth with the Atlantis. This cargo consists of samples of a number of technological- and material processing experiments, micro- biological material (blood-, urine- and salivasamples and floppy-discs with results of experiments. A hell of a job to find the right packages and to be sure not to spoil samples before transfer to Atlantis. They will also send to earth things belonging to the equipment of MIR. In the past the cosmonauts loaded things which they had to throw away in Progress-freighters to be burnt up in the atmosphere or they launched these items in space through a minor airlock. Now the Russians utilize this opportunity to have this all analysed on earth. Among this cargo are defective equipment and instrume nts and even containers with condenswater. Launch of Atlantis (STS-74): One day later than planned the Atlantis blasted off from K.S.C. on 12.11.95 at 123043UTC. OMS-2 burn took place at 131617UTC. Docking with MIR is planned for 15.11.95 at 0620UTC (according to TsUP) or 0628UTC (according to American sources). The first pass in which we can hear the MIR-station that day is during orbit 55650 from 0610-0617UTC during which Atlantis is in the 'final approach'. MIR can communicate with TsUP via Altair from 0534-0628UTC and via Luch from 0606-0704UTC. Based on experiences during the last week MIR will switch over from Altair to Luch on 0606UTC. Chris v.d. Berg, NL-9165/A-UK3202.