MIRNEWS.428    18 JUNE 1998

MIR routine:

It could be expected that the departure of Andy Thomas marking the
end of Phase-1, would be the beginning of a rather dull period on board MIR.
Already on 10.06 it became clear that this was not so. The crew had to relax
from the strenuous work during the visit of Discovery, but the past week was
far from dull. Now and then Altair-2 was in use for representative and
operational matters. On 10.06 they had a telebridge with the new capital of
Kazakhstan, Astana (ex-Akmola) , and Musabayev spoke with his president
Nazarbayev and some of his countrymen. The session was dedicated to the
inauguration of that new capital, which took place that day. On behalf of
himself, but also of Budarin and the departed Andrew Thomas, Musabayev
congratulated his president with the new capital and he expressed his
admiration regarding the energetic way in which the city was built. It proved
the enormous vitality of his country. He merely spoke in the Kazak language,
but added a short translation in Russian.

His friends in Kazakhstan asked questions about the guitar, which they had sent
to Musabayev recently. M. told that he had sent the guitar back to earth with
the Discovery because there would be no other possibilities to do that. Even if
it would be possible to stow the guitar in their Soyuz-TM, they would not get
permission to do that. A chief physician, Goncharov, took the guitar with him
to Russia and it will be delivered at Musabayev's house. The guitar has played
an important role during some parties by the Shuttle- and MIR crews. They
played different styles of music and songs together.

Exercise Pilot:

A few days later the cosmonauts heard that they had to execute
a training for the redocking of their ship Soyuz-TM27. They were upset for they
did not know anything about a redocking in this period. Later it was made clear
that this training was just an exercise like link-training for pilots. M. and
B. had to do this training with a computer program delivered to MIR recently.
They executed the training on 18.06.

On 17.06 the MIR crew sent a message to a medical conference in Moscow. They
wished the deputees success and showed a medical experiment by television.
Somewhat later they wished the city of Korolyov good luck with her 50th
anniversary.

Serious problem with one of the Elektrons:

This problem emerged on 17.06 after
a modification of the Elektron (oxygen generator) in Kvant-1 (Module-E). This
modification, involving a replacement of parts of the hydrogen gas analyzer,
was followed by some experiments. During these experiments all went wrong. Due
to a malfunctioning circuitry no oxygen, but hydrogen was injected into MIR's
atmosphere. This hydrogen, in fact in very small concentrations, came in MIR's
atmosphere together with a dirty smelling gas. Possibly the oxygen left the
complex into open space.

The cosmonauts were displeased. During EVA's they had reported that the valve
at the outer surface of Kvant-1 was in a bad shape. In their opinion it would
have been better to leave the Elektron as it was, because before the
modification they had no problems. The Elektron was switched off and filters
purified the air from noxious mixtures. On 18.06 the problem seemed to have
been solved.

Experiments:

During a long communication session via Altair-2 on 18.06 the
cosmonauts said that they were glad with the good news they got. (Possibly the
fact that the exploitation of MIR will be prolongated, after a period of
confusement and different statements on this subject.)

Musabayev extensively spoke about the experiments which they could do. He
emphasized the contribution of Kazak scientists in this field. On 19 and
20.06.98 they will use the Gallar furnace for the Kazak experiment Temir
(production of alloys). He also referred to experiments named Maksat. He told
that they had done the experiment Daterkhan together with Andy Thomas. They
wrote a report in which they dedicated the highest rating (5) to the Kazak
scientists.

Planned orbit change cancelled:

The planned orbit change to lower MIR's
altitude a little bit on 18.06.98 was cancelled for economical reasons. Due to
insufficient funding the launch of the next freighter (Progress-M40) has been
put back to September this year. The fuel of Pr-M39 is needed for eventual
attitude corrections of the MIR-complex. Because of the same budget problems
also the launch of Soyuz-TM28 planned for 2.08 is uncertain.

Chris van den Berg, NL-9165/A-UK3202.