MIRNEWS.296    2 APRIL 1996

American EVA outside MIR:

The EVA made by Clifford and Godwin on 27.03.96 lasted 6 hrs
and 2 mins. The MIR crew experienced this EVA passively: their
involvment consisted of observating and filming the event
through some portholes. It was not easy to cover all activities
of the American astronauts fully. They could see a part
of the EVA through a porthole in de airlock of Module-D. The
best view they got was through the porthole of the cabin of
the boardengineer in the Base Block. During the EVA the
communications went via American channels. On the EVA frequency
279.000 mc Clifford and Godwin could be heard now and then.
The same transmissions could be heard via the CNN relay from a
TDRS. The Americans installed the experiments on the outersurface
of the Docking Compartment at the Kristall-module. (The
Russians speak about the 'SO'. The 'O' stands for Otsek, which
means 'compartment'. So the do not speak about 'module'.)

Atlantis-MIR-combination:

During the period in which Atlantis
and MIR were linked together many activities took place during
the night in our area. We were lucky that this was not so
during the EVA, which took place during our morning hours. The
operations during the precursor flights cast a gloom over the
future. It becomes obvious who will be in command during the
flight of the International Space Station: undoubtedly this
will be the Americans. Immediately after the docking the
Americans took over the attitude control of the whole complex,
and most of the communications and the control of the operations
were theirs.

Undocking of Atlantis. This took place on 29.03.96 at 0108UTC.
After the undocking Atlantis made a flight around the MIR
complex and moved away at abt 1 hour later. Onufriyenko could
be heard on the MIR-frequencies 130.625 and 143.625mc speaking
about the attitude (movements-) control of the MIR station
which was now under full control of FCC Kalingrad again.
(TsUP-M). The transmissions of the images from MIR about the
Atlantis were relayed by trackingstations inside Russian
territory.

MIR:

The passes of MIR for our area take place during the
night hours and so there is not much to report about the life
on board.

Module Priroda:

The launch of this module has been put back
again. Latest available planned launch date: 23.04.1996.

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