MIRNEWS.364    27 JUNE 1997

Progress-M34:

The Russians abandoned the plan to finish the existence of this
freighter today. Pr-M34 is still needed for Telemetry analyses, necessary
for the investigations on the cause of the 'mini-catastrophe. For the
time being it is extremely difficult to get a reliable picture of that
what happened due to the huge amount of versions and rumours about
the failed docking attempt. When Pr-M34 will enter the earth's
atmosphere and decay has been not decided, it might take place on 28 or
29.07.97.

Inquiries: An extensive commission under the chairmanschip of the Head
of the RKA (Russian Space Agency), Yuriy Koptev, discussed the
situation on 26.07.97 and decided to delegate the investigations to one
or more working groups. These specialists will pay extensive attention
to the Telemetry from Pr-M34 after the undocking until the collision.
Already before the session of the commission Koptev gave a statement in
which he emphasized that the operations with MIR will not be
interrupted, that the crew will not be evacuated and that Russia will
perform her obligations in the framework of the international
cooperation. (How far political intentions will conflict with technical
imperfections and even impossibilities certainly will turn out in due
course.)

Intentions and options known up to now (27.06.1997 1200UTC):

A lot of press-releases speak about the necessity to make a spacewalk
(EVA) for the inspection and eventual repair of the little gap or crack
in the hull of Module Spektr. Such an EVA will certainly be executed,
but this will take place not before the arrival of the next
cargoship Progress-M35. The first EVA will be a so called 'internal
EVA' using the transition section (P.Kh.O.) as an airlock via which the
cosmonauts can enter the Spektr. Module Spektr: For a long time this
module was the 'base and home' of the American astronauts. In this
module Foale disposed about a lot of equimpent and experiments. The
crew has to determine what still is available and can be saved and
what is lost. For the time being a lot of experiments cannot be
executed and in fact the experimental program for this expedition is
almost fully suspended. One of the 4 solarpanels of Spektr has been
severely damaged, possibly beyond repair. The other 3 might be able to
deliver power, but due the disconnection of cables, some of those cables
had even to be cut in two, they are out of order. The damaged one and
one of the other 3 are badly needed for powersupply for the whole
complex. The event caused a powerreduction of appr. 50%. Before I spoke
about a little gap or crack and not as generally is done in
publications about this damage, about a gap, or even big hole. If it
would be a real gap the crew wouldb be dead. Depressurization would have
been a matter of seconds not only or the Spektr but also for the whole
complex. This depressurization was in fact a process which passed off 
slowly. The crew felt the decrease of the pressure in their ears and
they had still enough time to close one of the hatches to Spektr and -
possibly we will hear about this later- do a lot of things before closing
that hatch.

Situation on board of MIR:

A summary about the developments after the collision as derived from the 
enormous amount of radiotraffic will be published in NEWS.365.

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